2 1 4 love's meinie. 



to the reader's choice and fancy, till I get 

 some more birds looked at, and named : — 

 only, for a pretty end of my Appendix, here 

 are two bits of very precious letters, sent me 

 by friends who know birds better than most 

 scientific people, but have been too busy — 

 one in a ' Dorcas Society,' and the other in a 

 children's hospital — to write books, and only 

 now write these bits of letters on my special 

 petition. The member of the Dorcas Society 

 sends me this brief but final and satisfactory 

 answer to my above question about birds' 

 ears : — 



"We talk and think of birds as essentially 

 musical and mimetic, or at least vocal and 

 noisy creatures ; and yet we seem to think 

 that although they have an ear, they have 

 no ears. Little or nothing is told us of the 

 structure of a bird's ear. We are now too 

 enlightened to believe in what we can't see; 

 and ears that are never pricked, or cocked, or 

 laid back, — that merely receive and learn, but 

 don't express, — that are organs, not features, 

 don't interest our philosophers now. 



" If you blow gently on the feathers of the 

 side of a bird's head, a little above and behind 



