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A Penny Weekly Magazine of Natural History. 



No. 47. 



SEPTEMBER 18th, 1880. 



Vol. 1. 



BIRD TRIALS. 



THAT truth is strar ger than fiction 

 has been said ever since there was 

 any fiction, and the most romantic inven- 

 tions of the novelist are being out-done 

 every day by the eve its of real life. 

 In connection with Natural History, 

 readers used to be warned, not to be- 

 lieve too readily in "Travellers* Tales." 

 Modern research, while it has disproved 

 some of the stranger tales of the 

 older Naturalists has also proved the 

 truth of many other equally wonderful. 

 However sceptical may be the tend- 

 ency of modern thought, one thing is 

 certain, that most of p eople delight in 

 the marvellous, and that the more 

 extraordinary a tale may be, the more 

 attentively is it listened to, and eagerly 

 repeated, perhaps with additional 

 embellishments. Many people w T ho 

 cpa'e nothing for Natural History 

 itself, are pleased to read books on 

 its curiosities and marvels; anecdotes 

 of dogs, elephants, and other of the 

 more sagacious or better known 

 members of the Animal Kingdom. 



These people visit menageries, not to 

 learn the true forms of those animals 

 with whose appearance they have no 

 acquaintance but from pictures. A 

 Lion or a Leopard jumping through 

 hoops has much attraction for them, 

 while they care nothing for those that 

 are only hitere sting from their rarity 

 or from some reason specially important 

 to the true Naturalist. Even trained 

 Canaries or performing Fleas are 

 attractive to some. Nor must we 

 altogether disregard this, what we may 

 almost call, depraved tastes. Many a 

 good naturalist may have been first 

 attracted to the study, by something of 

 this sort, just as many a youth who 

 disregards the " dirty looking ones " 

 at the outset, may prove a good 

 Entomologist in the end. 



We have been led into this train 

 of thought by the cropping up of one 

 of the old stories that we delighted 

 in in our youth. We well remember 

 reading, we dare not say how many 

 years ago, in some old magazine, of 

 a certain place, in a certain country, 



