134 WOODVILLE : ITS PETS AND ITS PURSUITS. 



fitly concluded by an extract from a letter to a near and 

 mucli-loved relative : — 



" Woodville, 26th May 1831. 



" You will be delighted to hear that Isabella has been 

 in prodigious good case for some time back. We have 

 commenced our cuddy-ass excursions, and intend to con- 

 tinue them steadily. The beast is much improved in its 

 paces, and, with a great deal of the grace and dignity of 

 the higher quadrupeds, exhibits nothing of that perverse 

 obstinacy to which so many asses, both human and brute, 

 are entitled to lay claim, and of which the claims are 

 admitted by a considerate and cuddy-consoling, though 

 sometimes inconsistent world. 



"In regard to ornithology, you will be glad to hear 

 that our corner green-lintie's (linnet's) nest was more for- 

 tunate in escaping the eyes and fingers of bakers' and 

 butchers' boys than we could have looked for, considering 

 its exposed situation. I think when you left us they had 

 scarcely ceased to be, in the words of the late Dr Andrew 

 Thomson, ' a small family of featherless children ;' but 

 the Woodville air agreed so well with them that their 

 heads and tails hung over the sides of the nest, as if they 

 had been intended for a larger domicile. We looked 

 daily for their taking flight of their own accord, when one 

 morning two of the young Adies called, and expressed a 



