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portion which was supposed to shine at night. Be 

 careful, however, not to confound him with the Cedar 

 or Cherry Bird, our summer visitor. He resembles 

 him much in plumage, but is twice his size. 



Nor should we omit the names of Eedi, Swam- 

 merdam, Willoughby, John Eay, and especially of 

 Francis Bacon, amongst the laborious tillers of the soil 

 of natural history. 



Next to Aristotle and Pliny ranks the great botanist 

 and naturalist Linnaeus, who devoted a lifetime to 

 reforming and re-arranging the history of all natural 

 productions, and lived to see his method triumphant 

 and almost universally received. Nor was he a mere 

 nomenclator ; his vast genius led him to take the most 

 elevated views of nature. He penetrated with a glace 

 into causes which were the least obvious on the 

 surface. Order, precision, clearness, exactitude of des- 

 cription and accurate knowledge of relations in detail 

 distinguish his works. He it was who sent to Amer- 

 ica, to Quebec, the learned Peter Kalm. Every guide- 

 book reminds you of the amusing account Kalm wrote 

 of Quebec and Montreal society, in 1749 ; what a fine 

 fellow Count de la Galissonniere, the Governor-General 

 in those days, appeared to the Swedish traveller ; — how 

 our respected graudmothers chatted, frolicked, dressed, 

 danced ; — how well he related all he saw, and some 

 things he did not see. 



We are led next to consider the brilliant career of a 

 French naturalist, an elegant writer and profound philo- 

 sopher, Buffon. Possessed of a vast fortune, moving 

 in the highest circles of a nation famous for its civili- 

 zation and learning, Buffon, during half a century, from 

 his chdteau of Montbard ; promulgated his canons to 

 the scientific world. He tells us he spent forty years 

 in his study, perfecting and rounding the sentences of 

 his immortal works, but when bearing in mind the 

 life-like sketches of birds written by Buffon's successors 

 and contradictors, the field- naturalists of the newer school, 



