THE ROYAL BUCK-HOUNDS. 
A Deputation to Windsor. 
Queen of the sixty years of constant grace 
And love for all thy servants, great and small ! 
Suppliants we stand before thy Castle hall, 
Dumb driven deer, and pity pleads our case ; 
Robbed of our antlers— proof of royal race — 
Our limbs grown stiff within the prison stall. 
From cruel barb-wounds still the blood-gouts fall. 
Hounds’ teeth upon our flanks have left their trace. 
And we, who lent such honour to thy lawn 
Who belled so cheerly thro’ the Windsor glade. 
We pray thee heal a hunted creature’s smart ! 
Let the great year of gladness soon to dawn 
Bring mercy to thy gentle subjects’ aid. 
And England find a manlier merrier heart ! 
H. D. Rawnsley. 
CAST FEATHERS ON CHINESE WALLS. 
HE statement of the lady signing herself Edith A. 
Stock, published in the November number of Nature 
Notes, can scarcely be taken seriously by any one 
who has considered the miserable question of the 
means by which the markets are supplied, nay, deluged, with 
feathers, wings, and carcases, obtained by the wholesale 
massacre of the fairest birds in creation ; not egrets only, but 
birds of paradise, humming birds, and recently the crowned 
Victoria pigeon, whose name might well have won for the 
bearer a perennial close season all over the world. But the 
suggestion of your correspondent, if left unnoticed, may help to 
quench the scruples which are evidently stirring the hearts of 
some ladies respecting the destruction of bird-life, which they 
incite for the sake of obtaining an addition to their head-gear. 
Shopkeepers as a class can hardly be expected to com- 
municate to their customers unwelcome information which 
might prevent the sale of a profitable article. The plumes 
they sell are likely to be real or artificial, plucked from the 
dead or living bird (if the latter procedure should be held to 
improve the quality), just as the buyers prefer to believe. The 
serene credulity of many persons has, however, been disturbed 
by the wide circulation given by the London and country press 
to the statements made by Sir William Flower and other eminent 
ornithologists — that the so-called artificial aigrettes, submitted 
