REMINISCENCES OF ANDREW DOWNS. XVll 



"You call them thieves and pillagers; but know 

 They are the winged wardens of your farms. 

 ******* 

 And think of your woods and orchards without birds! 

 Of empty nests that cling to boughs and leaves, 

 As in an idiot's brain remembered words 

 Hang empty 'mid the cobwebs of his dreams! " 

 But to return from this digression to Downs's feathered captives who 

 are apparently not a whit less happy than the wild birds who flit around 

 them. 



Leaving the motley assemblage of poultry and water-fowl in the yard, 

 we enter the shrubberies by soft tanned walks along which are scattered 

 the clean-looking, roomy cages allotted to a variety of feathered creatures. 

 Here is an airy little tenement devoted to silver pheasants. The neatness 

 of their plumage and the graceful sweep of their tails render them, 

 exceedingly ornamental; but they are, withal, so pugnacious that two 

 separated males apparently devote their whole lives to pacing up and 

 down the dividing wire netting, challenging each other to mortal combat. 

 The silvery plumage of their necks and backs is beautifully pencilled with 

 minute lines, and strongly relieved by their glossy black breasts and 

 bodies. We so generally see birds with the lightest colours beneath, tuat, 

 when this rule is excepted, a strange appearance is produced and the bird 

 would almost seem inverted. Another instance is that of our common bob 

 o'Lincoln in its summer dress. Further on, whole groves of young spruces 

 are enclosed and netted over; and against their dark foliage the resplend- 

 ent plumage of the golden pheasants shines in bright contrast as they rim 

 to and from the cover and their littie house in the corner. Then there 

 are aviaries with flocks of plump snow-buntings; another where the merle 

 and throstle, so often menaoned in the poetry of the fields of merry Eng- 

 land, nestle in the fir tree, happily forgetful of the hawthorn bush or oak 

 coppice; the plumed and Californian quails from the far west pick lazily 

 at ant-hills or squat in gi'oups on the warm, sunny banks, under fern and 

 low bushes tastefully introduced in their enclosures; whilst, in another, 

 the spruce partridge of our own forests may be seen pruning the foliage of 

 his favourite larch or silver-fir. 



These giounds offer great natural advantages for the tasteful arrange- 

 ment of a zoological garden: the sloping hillside topped by thick woods is 

 continually broken by mossy hollows with numerous little brooks to which 

 the woodcock and bittern often resort ; and the dry, grassy knolls between 

 are adorned by clumps of young firs and white birches, and the olive gi-een 

 tufts of the ground-juniper, amongst the roots of which the retiring may- 

 flower trails towards the light. 



By the side of one of these little valleys, dammed so as to form a 

 miniature lake over which a picturesque rustic bridge is thrown, stands a, 

 PRor. & Trans. N. S. Inst. Sci., Vol. XII. Pkoc -B. 



