LEAVES FROM THE NOTE-BOOK OF A NATURALIST. 



The white-headed eagles seemed very much in 

 earnest. Of them the reader may know more 

 hereafter, if he should choose to kill time by tak- 

 ing up a continuation of these notes. 



This, we are told, is a world of compensation, 

 though the compensation is too often terribly on 

 one side, as in the often-repeated case of English- 

 men being called upon to pay for " the vested 

 interests " of a nuisance that would not be tolerated 

 for three months in any city of civilized Europe 

 except London Smithfield Market, for instance. 

 But still this best of all possible worlds is a world 

 of compensation. In obedience to this law, Mr. 

 Yarrell, in his excellent History of British Birds, 

 has recorded a most interesting account of a buz- 

 zard * hatching chickens, in order, no doubt, to 

 balance the fact of a hen hatching a condor. 



A solitary male buzzard in our time made des- 

 perate love to the shoe of the gardener of the 

 Physic Garden at Oxford, with the gardener's foot 

 in the said shoe ; but Mr. Yarrell's story relates 

 to the gentler sex, and he prefaces it with an ob- 

 servation as to the extreme partiality of the com- 

 mon buzzard for the seasonal task of incubation 

 and rearing young birds. 



The bird mentioned by Mr. Yarrell was kept 

 in the garden of the Chequers, in the good town 

 of Uxbridge, of ineffectual treaty memory. The 

 poor bird she was well known to many a brother 

 of the angle, " now," as old Izaak hath it, " with 

 God " manifested her inclination to frame a nest 



* Buteo vulgaria. 



by gathering and twisting about all the loose sticks 

 she could lay beak and claw on. The good mas- 

 ter of the house had compassion on her, furnished 

 her with twigs and all appliances and means to 

 boot, and the solitary creature went to work and 

 completed a nest. Two hens' eggs were put 

 under her ; she hatched them well and reared 

 them bravely. Her desire to sit was indicated by 

 scratching holes in the garden, and breaking and 

 tearing everything within reach of beak and talons. 

 Year after year did she hatch and bring up a 

 goodly troop of chickens, and in 1831 her brood 

 consisted of nine, after the loss of one, for she had 

 brought out ten. Upon one occasion her kind 

 master, to save her from what he thought the 

 ennui of sitting, put down to her a newly hatched 

 lot. Luckless little ones, she destroyed every chick 

 of them. The good man did wot know the animal 

 economy which makes the application of the eggs 

 to the inflamed breast of the female bird a balm, 

 rendering this labor of Jove twice blessed, aad 

 leading in its train all the maternal charities. 

 The ready-made nestlings were treated as intrud- 

 ing impostors; but to her own foster-chicks no 

 honest barn-door chuckie was ever more attentive ; 

 only when ilesh was given to her, and she broke 

 it up for her young family, she appeared mortified 

 that after taking a few morsels, they left her and 

 her oarrion to pick up the grain with which they 

 ware supplied. 



Have we not something to answer for in con- 

 fining God's creatures in solitude where they can- 

 not fulfil the divine command? 



