90 



CHAPTER OF VARIETIES. 



ciless pursuers. One boy, however, actuated perhaps as much by a 

 spirit of opposition as benevolence, declaimed loudly against this medi- 

 tated act of perfidy, — the violation of sanctuary; and avowed himself 

 resolutely bent, if need were, upon wager of battle in the cause of 

 humanity. The intrepid fellow was, at length, joined by one or two 

 of his more generous associates. After a brief but stormy altercation, 

 the voices of honour and of mercy prevailed : and, although many an 

 anxious and eventful year has since passed over us, we have not yet 

 forgotten the glow of exultation which lighted up the eyes, and expanded 

 the hearts, of the youthful defenders of the persecuted creature ; when 

 they heard the voices of dog and man, after a short pause, grow fainter 

 upon the breeze j and saw the poor hare herself, recruited by a few 

 minutes' respite, limp off to rest in safety, or at least to die in peace, 

 beneath the sheltering underwood of an adjacent coppice. — Dr. 

 Shirley Palmer, Birmingham. 



On the stomachs of birds. — I have had occasion to open two 

 or three bearded tits, and have observed that the stomach is exceed- 

 ingly strong and muscular ; the stomachs of the tits may almost be 

 called membranaceous ; that of the shrike is quite so. I have often 

 been astonished to perceive hard seeds, grains of corn, &c, in the 

 almost membranaceous stomach of the oxeye, which differs so much 

 from the muscular gizzards of the buntings and others which subsist on 

 such food. Amongst other things I have noticed small snails in th e 

 stomach of the oxeye. Are you aware that, many hard bill birds use 

 the throat or swallow as a pouch, or reservoir for food ? A sparrow 

 that I shot a few mornings since had its throat greatly distended with 

 grains of corn. 



A kestrel that had long been tame in the garden of one of my neigh- 

 bours, was lately brought to me, dead ; and I was informed that it had 

 for several days refused all nourishment, and that it consequently died 

 from starvation. Poor thing, it died indeed from inanition, and was 

 literally reduced to nothing but skin and bones ; but the reason that it 

 refused its food, was that it had swallowed a large piece of knotted 

 rope, which filled and distended the stomach, so that nothing else could 

 possibly enter. The rope, however, was so softened, and its toughness 

 so subdued by the action of the gastric juice, that had the hawk lived 

 a day or two longer, it would probably have passed by the vent, or have 

 been ejected in balls by the mouth. — E. Blyth, Tooting, Surrey. 



The cricket and the cockroach. — It is said by Linnaeus, and 

 copied by Donovan and others, that the house cricket (Acheta domes- 



