AND AMERICAN RURAL SPORTS. 
133 
monkeys. The centre of the rooms is filled with cases of 
Mollusca of the rarest and most beautiful species, both fossil 
and recent; the animals preserved in spirits occupy some of 
the lower shelves; the rest are filled with corallines and 
sponges; the cases above are lined with insects. 
Descending the staircase, we pass through those mighty 
ruins of former ages, the fossils, chiefly collected by Baron 
Cuvier; after which come the rocks and minerals. The 
reptiles, which cover the sides and ceilings of the next 
apartment, have lately been much extended ; and the for- 
mer library having been appropriated to ichthyology, the 
books have been moved to the rooms of a deceased professor, 
and their place is now wholly occupied by fishes. Below 
these are three entirely new rooms, formed by turning the 
porter of the gate in the Rue du Jardin du Koi out of his 
habitation, and converting that and some lecture rooms into 
a gallery for the heavier quadrupeds, such as elephants, hip- 
popotami, &c. on the ground floor. 
The galleries of botany are scarcely big enough to con- 
tain the piles of dried plants brought home by the naturalists 
of the expeditions of discovery; and the collection of woods 
and dried seeds bids fair very soon to exceed the limits 
assigned to it. The School of Botany, so beautifully ar- 
ranged according to the natural system, is three times as 
large as it was six years back. The wet summer has much 
injured the parterres; still, however, the daturas have been 
placed outside the green-houses; the salvias, amounting to 
large shrubs, were still in blossom; and the flower-garden, 
the garden of naturalization, and the medicinal parterres, 
were all blooming. In short, with the exception of living 
Carnivora, every department of this wonderful establish- 
ment has made the most astonishing progress, even within 
the last few years, and is now so perfect that we almost 
wish the treasures of nature exhausted, for fear the least 
alteration for the reception of additions should be detri- 
mental to its beauty. 
I cannot suppose it possible for an English amateur of 
natural history to turn from this little world of science and 
wonder without a sigh of regret — without dwelling on the 
causes, whatever they may be, which keep his own country 
in such deep arrears in this respect. That England, which 
perfects not only her own undertakings, but the under- 
takings of other nations, with a hundred fold the opportu- 
nity in her commercial connections, which preclude even 
the necessity of sending out travellers on purpose — that 
England should be thus outdone by her less enterprising 
neighbour, is a fact at which I cannot help grieving, but 
which I do not presume to investigate. I am, Sir, &c. 
S. Lee. 
27 Burton Street, Nov. 19. 
L 1 
ROBIN. 
TURD US MIGRA TORIUS. 
[Plate XII.] 
Linn. Syst. i, p . 292, 6. — Turdus Canadensis, Briss. 
ii, p . 225, 9. — La Litorne de Canada, Buff. iii, p . 
307. — Grive de Canada, PI. Enl. 556, 1 . — Fieldfare 
of Carolina, Cat. Car. 1,29. — Red-breasted Thrush, 
Arct. Zool. ii, No. 196. — Lath. Syn. ii , p. 26. — Bar- 
tram,^. 290. — J. Doughty’s collection. 
This well known bird, being familiar to almost every 
body, will require but a short description. It measures 
nine inches and a half in length; the bill is strong, an inch 
long, and of a full yellow, though sometimes black, or 
dusky near the tip of the upper mandible; the head, back 
of the neck, and tail is black; the back and rump an ash 
colour; the wings are black edged with light ash; the inner 
tips of the two exterior tail feathers are white; three small 
spots of white border the eye; the throat and upper part of 
the breast is black, the former streaked with white; the 
whole of the rest of the breast, down as far as the thighs, is 
of a dark orange; belly and vent white, slightly waved 
with dusky ash; legs dark brown; claws black and strong. 
The colours of the female are more of the light ash, less 
deepened with black; and the orange on the breast is much 
paler and more broadly skirted with white. The name of 
this bird bespeaks him a bird of passage, as are all the dif- 
ferent species of Thrushes we have; but the one we are 
now describing being more unsettled, and continually 
roving about from one region to another, during fall and 
winter, seems particularly entitled to the appellation. 
Scarce a winter passes but innumerable thousands of them 
are seen in the lower parts of the whole Atlantic States, 
from New Hampshire to Carolina, particularly in the 
neighbourhood of our towns; and from the circumstance of 
their leaving, during that season, the country to the north- 
west of the great range of the Alleghany, from Maryland 
northward, it would appear that they not only migrate 
from north to south, but from west to east, to avoid the 
deep snows that generally prevail on these high regions for 
at least four months in the year. 
The Robin builds a large nest, often on an apple tree, 
plasters it in the inside with mud, and lines it with hay or 
fine grass. The female lays five eggs of a beautiful sea 
green. Their principal food is berries, worms and cater- 
pillars. Of the first he prefers those of the sour gum 
( Nyssa sylvatica). So fond are they of Gum berries, that 
wherever there is one of these trees covered with fruit, and 
