popular science review. 
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brilliant plumage and painted beaks make a splendid appear- 
ance. The light spongy substance of their delicately-tinted 
mandibles prevents them from being impediments to motion, 
as it might be supposed they were ; and the same may be 
observed of the closely allied birds called Hornbills (Bvteros), 
with which, however, they must not be confounded, for the 
latter are confined to the Old World, while the former are only 
found in the New. 
The Canadian exhibition contained many northern birds, as 
the snowy owl, great-horned owl, whip-poor-will .(a species of 
goat-suclcer) ; — the American purple martin, passenger pigeon, 
and yellow-billed cuckoo — birds which have been met with in 
this country; the northern humming-bird ( Trochilus colibris), 
the cedar-bird, the Canadian goose, canvas-backed duck, 
American wigeon, shoveller duck, &c. Fishes, also, to the 
number of nearly forty, representing the resources of the 
lakes and rivers of Upper Canada, were shown; among which 
the salmon, herring, &c., representing an export value of 
several hundreds of thousands sterling per annum, were con- 
spicuous. The salmon ascends the river St. Lawrence for 
1,200 miles in order to spawn, and vast numbers are annually 
taken. 
Nova Scotia, also, sent her fish, but well preserved in spirits, 
such as the mackerel, herring, cod, salmon, hake, flounder, eel, 
haddock, trout, whiting, &c., and several edible mollusca, such 
as the sol en (razor shell), Virginian oyster, and the great mussel 
(Mactra gigantea ) ; also the enormous American lobster 
( Homarus Americanus) , with claws measuring fifteen inches 
in length and weighing several pounds. In the centre of the 
court stood a splendid specimen of the largest of existing deer, 
the elk or moose ( Gervus aloes), said to be the largest stuffed 
animal in the Exhibition. The horns sometimes exceed 
60 lb. in weight, and, as an old writer says of him, 
“ The elk is a monster of the venison sorte ; his horns exceed 
(in weight) all creatures which the New World affords.” 
He does not attain his full growth until fourteen years old, 
and then reaches a weight of eleven or twelve hundred pounds. 
A fine pair of horns, also, of the Wapiti deer ( Gervus Cana- 
densis), decorated this court — an animal resembling in appear- 
ance the red deer of Europe. Its flesh is not so highly prized 
as that of the elk, and that perhaps will prevent its ever being 
largely domesticated in this country, where it readily thrives. 
The other contents of this court were chiefly skins from the 
barren grounds, the great source of those furs that are at once 
the comfort and the bane of the poor animals which yield them 
with their lives to the civilized luxury of man. In these tree- 
less tracts roam the glutton, the ermine, the bear, the Arctic 
