liiH Audubon'' s Birds of America, 



ward to obtain a share of the plunder. The Canada jay, of 

 which Mr Swainson's " whiskey jack" is the hopeful son, albeit 

 he disclaims the connection, makes a very pleasing picture, 

 backed as it is by the fine foliage of the white oak ; and the 

 pileated woodpeckers, grubbing and bickering on an old stump 

 amid clusters of racoon grapes, make us almost forget that gas- 

 light and coal-fire, with which we view them, are not a confla- 

 gration of the Ohio woods. 



The next plate that strikes us, is that representing the nest of 

 the ferruginous thrush, invaded by a villanous black snake, who 

 is likely to pay for his temerity, for two good neighbours have 

 come to the aid of the distressed birds, and, while one tears the 

 hide of the ugly reptile, another aims a blow at his eye, and a 

 third is ready to pull his tongue out by the root ; but, alas ! the 

 female has been strangled by the serpent, the nest has been up- 

 set, and as yet the issue of the conflict is doubtful. 



The snowy owls, perched on the frail twigs of a decayed' tree*, 

 amid the gloom of a thunder-storm ; the young white-headed 

 eagle, screaming for his absent mother ; the migratory thrushes, 

 just arrived with a supply of food for their voracious younglings ; 

 the meadow-larks, with their nest embowered among the yellow- 

 flowered gerardias ; and the beautiful yellow-breasted chats, 

 who have pitched their camp in a pleasant place, among the 

 fragrant leaves and delicately tinted flowers of the sweet-briar, 

 are all objects worthy of the most intense study of the orni- 

 thological painter, and the admiration of every lover of Nature's 

 wonderful works. 



We have passed over as many sparrows, finches, and fly- 

 catchers, as would suffice to stock a little wood, not because they 

 are not all beautiful and striking, but because where all is ad- 

 mirable it is difficult to select what is most so; and now, having 

 arrived at the 141st plate, we are at once struck with soiiictbing 

 but of keeping. It is the figure, stiffs and straight, of a Stanley 

 hawk, perched on ai. island a hundred yards off", and yet repre- 

 sented of the natural size, while the tip of his tail covers a tongue 

 of land not ten yards off". The engraver must have stuck this 

 bird in the wrong place, or the artist must have meant it as-a 

 caricature, like Hogarth''s famous print, in which a man on^a 

 distant hill is lighting his pipe at a candle held out t)f a window 



