22 



NATUKAL SCIENCE NEWS. 



on it under the branching shade. 

 This extraordinary combination it 

 was the great naturalist's humor to 

 liken to John Bull and the nation- 

 al debt. 



In no tree fancier's grounds were 

 there ever one-tenth of the hollow 

 trunks which were to be found at 

 Walton Hall; the fact being that 

 the owner encouraged and fostered 

 decay for the purpose of his birds' 

 paradise. These trees were pro- 

 tected by artificial roofs in order 

 to keep their hollows dry, and fit- 

 ted thus for the reception of any 

 feathered couple inclined to marry" 

 and settle. Holes were also pierc- 

 ed in the stems, to afford ingress 

 and egress; and one really would 

 scarcely be surprised if they had 

 been furnished with bells for "ser- 

 vants" and "visitors." In an ash 

 tree trunk thus artificially prepar- 

 ed, and set apart for owls (the 

 squire's favorite bird), an ox-eyed 

 titmouse took the liberty of nest- 

 ing, hatching and maturing her 

 young. Mr. Waterton attached a 

 door, hung on hinges, to exactly 

 fit the opening in the trunk, hav- 

 ing a hole in its interior portion 

 for the passage of the titmouse. 

 The squire would daily visit his 

 little tenant, and opening the door 

 delicately drew his hand over the 

 back of the sitting bird, as though 

 to assure it of his protection. But 

 unfortunately, one year, after the 

 bird had flown, a squirrel took 

 possession of this eligible tene- 

 ment, and although every vestige 

 of the lining of the nest was care- 

 fully removed, no titmouse or any 

 other bird ever occupied it again. 



In May, 1862, the squire pointed 

 out to the author no less than 

 three bird's nests in one cavity — 

 a jackdaw's wirh five eggs; a barn 

 owl's with three young ones, close 

 to which lay several dead mice and 

 a half-grown rat, as in a larder; 

 and eighteen inches above the 

 owl's nest, a redstart's containing 

 six eggs! Our author deduces 

 from this circumstance, that in an 

 unreclaimed state, birds, although 

 of different species, are not dispos- 

 ed to quarrel; and the fact that 

 near this "happy family" a pair of 

 water-hens hatched their eggs in a 

 perfectly exposed nest, under the 

 very eyes of two carrion crows who 

 occupied the first floor of the same 

 tree, an alder, without the least 

 molestation, seems to confirm this 

 view. 



In this Garden of .Eden, how- 

 ever, all sorts of anomalous things 

 seem to have been done by birds. 

 In a cleft branch of a fir tree, 

 twenty-four feet from the ground, 



a peahen built her nest, through 

 which piece of ambition, since fall- 

 ing is much easier to learn than 

 flying, she lost all her young ones. 

 In the branch of an oak, twelve 

 feet from the ground, a wild duck 

 nested, and brought down all her 

 brood in safety to their natural 

 element. A pair of coots built 

 their nest on the extreme end of a 

 willow branch closely overhanging 

 the water; but the weight of the 

 materials, and especially of the 

 birds themselves, depressed it so 

 that their habitation rested on the 

 very snrface of the water, and its 

 contents rose and fell with every 

 ripple; and, finally, another pair 

 of coots who had built their house 

 upon what they considered terra 

 firma, found themselves altogether 

 adrift one stormy morning, and 

 continued so, veering with the 

 fickle breeze for many days, until 

 at last the eggs were hatched, and 

 their young family became inde- 

 pendent and could shift for them- 

 selves. All these minutiae were 

 carefully watched by the squire. 

 An excellent telescope enabled 

 him to perceive from his drawing- 

 room window the manceuvers of 

 both land and water fowls. "You 

 could carefully scrutinize their 

 form, their color, their plumage, 

 the color of their legs, the precise 

 form and hue of their mandibles, 

 and not infrequently even the color 

 of the iris of the eye; also their 

 mode of walking, of swimming, 

 and of resting. You could dis- 

 tinctly ascertain the various kinds 

 of food on which they lived and 

 fed their young. You could see 

 herons, the water hens, the coots, 

 the Egyptian and the Canada 

 geese, the carrion crows, the ring- 

 doves (occasionally on their nests) 

 the wild duck, teal, and widgeon." 

 No less than eighty-nine descrip- 

 tions of land bird, and thirty of 

 water-fowl, sojourned in the 

 grounds or about the lake of Wal- 

 ton Hall. In winter when the lake 

 was frozen, it was literally a fact 

 that the ice could sometimes not 

 be discerned, it was so crowded by 

 the thousands of water fowl that 

 huddled Together upon it without 

 sound or motion. 



Mr. Waterton, it may be easily 

 imagined, was himself no sports- 

 man, but it was his custom to sup- 

 ply his own table on a fast day (he 

 was a Roman Catholic) with fish 

 shot by himself with a bow and 

 arrow. Otherwise he made war 

 on no living creature, except the 

 rat: the "Hanoverian" rat, as he 

 designated him with bitterness; 

 and even then he preferred to ex- 



ile rather than destroy. On his 

 return home from his famous wan- 

 derings in South America, he found 

 the hall so infested with rats that 

 nothing was safe from them. But 

 having caught a fine specimen of 

 the "Hanoverian" in a "harmless 

 trap;" he carefully smeared him 

 over with tar, and let him depart. 

 This astonished and highly-scent- 

 ed animal immediately scoured all 

 the rat passages, and thus impreg- 

 nated them with the odor of all 

 others most offensive to his breth- 

 ren, who fled by hundreds in the 

 night across the narrow portion of 

 the lake, and were no more seen. 

 Though very bigoted in religious 

 matters, the squire was indeed a 

 most tolerant and tender-hearted 

 man. He built a shelter upon a 

 certain part of the lake, expressly 

 for poor folks, who were permitted 

 to fish whether for purposes of sale 

 or for their own dinners; and not- 

 withstanding that it was his cus- 

 tom to dress like a miser and a 

 scarecrow, and to live like an as- 

 cetic, sleeping upon bare boards 

 with a hollowed piece of wood for 

 a pillow, and fasting much longer 

 than was good for him, he was 

 very charitable and open-handed to 

 others. 



It must be confessed, however, we 

 gather from this volume that the 

 great naturalist was, out of his 

 profession, by no means a wise 

 man, and certainly not a witty one. 

 He loved jokes of a schoolboy sort 

 and indulged in sarcasms more 

 practical than delicate. The two 

 knockers of his front door were 

 cast from bell metal, in the simili- 

 tude of human faces, the one rep- 

 resenting mirth, and the other 

 misery. The former >was immov- 

 ably fixed to the door, and seemed 

 to grin with delight at your fruit- 

 less efforts to raise it; the latter 

 appeared to suffer agonies from the 

 blows you inflicted on it. In the 

 vestibule was a singularly conceiv- 

 ed model of a night-mare, with a 

 human face grinning and showing 

 the tusks of a wild boar, the hands 

 of a man, Satatanic horns, ele- 

 phant's ears, bat's wings, one clov- 

 en foot, one eagle's talon, and with 

 the tail of a serpent; beneath it 

 was the following motto: — 



Assidens prrecordiis 

 Pavore somnus auferarn. 



It was his humor, more than 

 once, when between seventy and 

 eighty years of age to welcome the 

 author when he came to dinner, 

 by hiding on all fours under the 

 hall table, and pretending to be a 

 dog. He made use of his wonder- 

 ful taxidermic talents to represent 



