122 A BIRD COLLECTOR'S MEDLEY. 



fox-terrier, with ruff erect, is straining every nerve to get at them. Jays, 

 Ducks, cats, and squirrels fill up the rest of the row, and on the shelf above 

 two Curlews (saddest sight of all), begrimed with dirt and unable to raise a 

 tail between them, are mournfully stalking round their prison, ever and anon 

 darting their long beaks with spasmodic and painful jerks between the bars 

 a weird uncanny couple, hardly to be recognized as relations of the handsome 

 birds that we have watched so often amidst the natural surroundings of the 

 shore. 



Beside these sits a Merlin, so blackened by smoke that he might easily 

 pass as a melanism, brooding perhaps, in doleful silence, over the days when 

 he, too, skimmed in rapturous freedom across the marshes, or chased the 

 flying Titlark on the moor. 



It is a melancholy spectacle to linger over, and we leave them with the 

 hope that they may at least find their way to some spacious aviary, or the 

 still less irksome confinement of a lawn. 



Many other creatures, both furred and feathered, might be added to the 

 above-mentioned list, for Leadenhall is in some respects a second edition of 

 the old Seven Dials ; but the pitiful vision of those unfortunate Curlews has 

 done much to allay our curiosity, and we have lost the desire for further 

 investigation of their cells. 



