Oar Lizards. 21 



■ Birds ! birds ! ye are beautiful things. 



With your earth-treading feet, and your cloud-cleaviug wings; 



Where shall man wander, and where shall he dwell, 



Beautiful birds, that ye come not as well ? 



Ye have nests on the mountain, all rugged and stark. 



Ye have nests in the forest, all tangled and dark ; 



Ye build and ye brood 'neath the cottager's eaves. 



And ye sleep on the sod 'mid the bonnie green leaves ; 



Ye hide in the heather, ye lurk in the brake. 



Ye dive in the sweet flags that shadow the lake ; 



Ye skim where the stream pai'ts the orchard-decked land, 



Ye dance where the foam sweeps the desolate strand. 



Beautiful birds ! ye come thickly around. 



When the bud's on the branch and the snow's on the ground ; 



Ye come when the richest of roses flush out. 



And ye come when the yellow leaf eddies about. 



Beautiful birds ! how the schoolboy remembers 



The warblers that chorused his holiday time ; 



The robin that chirped in the frosty Decembers ; 



The blackbird that whistled through flower-crowu'd June. 



That schoolboy remembers his holiday ramble. 



When he pulled every blossom of palm he could see. 



When his finger was raised as he stopped in the bramble. 



With * Hark ! there's the cuckoo : how close he must be !"* 



CHAPTER IV. 



OUR LIZARDS. 



O great has been the effect of domestication, and 

 the pains that have been taken in their breeding, 

 I' that canaries may now be found of almost every 

 hue and colour. " Buffon enumerates twenty varieties," 

 says a writer in the ' Popular Encyclopaedia,' " and many 

 more," he contir.ues, " might probably be added to the 

 list, were all the chann^es incident to a state of domestica- 



