timid, shrinking creature, but cats which have been kittened in the woods, especially if they have descended from several generations of wild ancestors, are bold and ferocious, though generally distinct from the genuine wild animal. The Border land, once conspicuous for its wild men, had its wild cats of both species. In Scotland, at one period, they must have been common, for, in the reign of David I., more than 700 years ago, an act was passed, imposing a tax on the exportation of certain furs, including those of the cat, the beaver, and the sable. In Jed Forest they must have been plentiful, even not far from human habitations; for, on the estate of Lord Campbell, and within a mile of Jedburgh, is a gate called "the wild-cat gate. In 1855 Lord Ravensworth shot, in Northumberland, a cat which in color and almost in size resembled the genuine wild animal, but it had a tapering tail, and not the long tail all of one thickness and tipped with black, which always distinguishes the real cat of the woods.

Two cases occur to us in which the real wild cat was seen, one on either side of the Border. About sixty years since a boy was herding cows among the skirts of the Lammermuirs, and part of the pasture ground was a rocky ravine, which had the reputation of harboring a colony of wild cats. In the glen were some tall trees, and near the top of one he observed a large nest, which looked like that of a hooded crow. He resolved to climb the tree and explore the nest. The tree grew from a deep hollow near the bottom of a precipice, and had a trunk of about fifty feet without branches; after which, the branches spread out, and on one side almost touched a point of rock that protruded six or seven feet in front of the precipice. The nest was about twenty feet higher than this point. The adventurous cowherd doffed his corduroy jacket, climbed the bare trunk till he reached the branches, where he rested for a little, then resumed his climbing, but wondered there was neither sound nor sign of crows. Still he never thought of wild cats. In due time he reached the nest, put his hand into it as schoolboys do, and looked over the edge at the same time. In a moment three young cats, their eyes like lightning, their little tails

bristling, and and their backs set up, scratched him, sprang toward his face as far as the edge of the nest, striking out with their paws with great ferocity. They were of a grayish dun color, and apparently about five weeks old. Terrified lest the mother cat should spring on him, the cowherd descended the tree with all haste, but fortunately for him the creature did not appear. In the evening the men of the farm, attended by dogs and armed with guns, proceeded to the place. From the top of the rock several shots were fired through the nest, and the mother and her young ones were all killed. That was before the era of naturalists' clubs, and so one of the men made a cap of the old cat's skin instead of sending it to a museum. The nest had been that of a hooded crow, but had been appropriated by the cat, which reached the branches of the tree from the projecting ledge of rocks.

The other case was in Northumberland, near Keilder Castle, a hunting seat of the Duke of Northumberland, and the story is told by James Telfer, formerly schoolmaster at Taughtree, in Liddesdale. The district between Taughtree and Keilder, as also for miles on every side, is a wild pastoral country, and was much more sparsely inhabited about the middle of last century than it now is, besides being overgrown with natural wood. In the forests of Keilder wild cats were believed to have an asylum, and one day James Telfer's grandfather, a stalwart shepherd, encountered one. Having occasion to be in the Keilder district, a wild cat suddenly, and apparently without provocation, sprang on him, aiming at his throat, biting and scratching most viciously. Though an athletic man he would have succumbed but for the help of his dog. After several ineffectual efforts to strangle the creature or fling it from him, Telfer contrived at length to pin it to the ground with one knee, and then, with the help of the collie, he managed to kill the animal. When stretched on the ground, after life was extinct, it was found to measure rather more than the dog from the nose to the tip of the tail. The shepherd bore marks of the encounter to his dying day, particularly in the disfiguration of a thumb-nail, which had been split.

J. T.

TALKING BIRDS.

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Parrots, starlings, and jackdaws are not the only birds that talk." Birds not possessed of native powers of melody are usually gifted with very varied abilities of articulation. A hooded crow, for instance, can produce an astonishing variety of complex noises from his throat, and his talents only lack cultivation to enable him to give utterance to. words; but his natural language is the very reverse of melodious, and cannot in any sense be considered as a song." I have known a hooded crow to say "Papa!" with great correctness, and, what is more remarkable, he invariably applied the name to its proper ownernot the hoodie's papa, but his master's. The starling talks very roughly, indeed, to his fellows, but he is one of the best mimics we have, imitating the notes of other birds, and even the human voice, with great accuracy. Magpies also can be taught to articulate with a tolerable degree of accuracy. The mocking-bird, The mocking-bird, too, so well known in some parts of the United States, has no natural melody of his own, but he contrives to copy in a most faithful manner the songs of nearly all his feathered neighbors.

But it is a little surprising to find that the canary, so superbly endowed by nature with musical taste and skill, will condescend on occasion to imitate the unmelodious tones of the human voice, although the fact that he does so is beyond dispute. A correspondent of Land and Water mentions a canary owned by an old lady residing in Saltford, near Bath, which was able to pronounce several words with remarkable distinctness. At the conclusion of its song the bird nearly always said, "Kiss, kiss, Miss Lizzie, kiss, kiss!"- Miss Lizzie being the daughter of its owner; and, after repeating the words more than once, a new song was begun. It seems that these words were acquired several years ago, when the bird was quite young, and during the moulting season, when its natural song would be discontinued.

Curiously enough, the only cases I have known of talking canaries have occurred in the West of England, but I am not able to draw any conclusion of value from that circumstance. It may be a

mere coincidence, or there may possibly be a certain family of canaries settled in the west country, whose peculiar gift it is to imitate, with a fair amount of accuracy, the various intonations of the human voice. A canary which was owned by a lady in Weston-super-Mare was accustomed to hear its mistress, an invalid, say, on conclusion of its song, "Oh beauty, beauty! Sing that again!" These words the bird picked up, and was soon able to repeat, but its education made no further progress, and no additional words were acquired. The short sentence, as in the case of the Saltford bird, was never uttered save after a brilliant burst of song.

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It is wholly incorrect to suppose that no meaning is ever attached by talking birds to such words or short sentences as they may be able to pronounce. The well-known case of the Edinburgh parrot, whose singular accomplishments have been already noticed in more than one periodical, has settled this question once and for ever. So far was this clever bird above mere parrot-talk” that he rarely spoke a word which had not direct relation to surrounding objects or events. A strange dog introduced into the room was greeted with loud cries of "Put him out! Put him out! I'm so frightened!" Clergymen attending his numerous levees were politely requested to "Gie oot the Psalm!" and, as this by itself would savor somewhat of habitual irreverence on Poll's part, it is only fair to add that he was very particular at meal-times in telling the assembled family to "Say grace first!" T. E.

AUSTRALIAN LOVE BIRDS.

As these pretty little Parrakeets have become very popular and are now placed within common reach by the low price consequent upon the importation of vast numbers from Australia, a little information respecting their history and habits will perhaps be interesting to those who keep them or intend doing so.

At first sight the now common name Budgerigar, strikes one as rather peculiar and ugly, and it is a puzzle to find its derivation. It appears, however, to be a corruption of the word "Beauregard, and is in its distorted spelling perhaps

of easier pronunciation to our colonial friends than the correct and more refined one.

The scientific name is Melopsittacus undulatus, Undulated Grass Parrakeet. The birds are, however, also known as Shell Parrots, Australian Love Birds, Zebra Parrakeets, and Beauregards. They live in immense flocks all over Australia, and in ordinary seasons especially in the neighborhood of the River Murray. Here they can be met with during breeding time by tens of thousands, enlivening the tall grass and the immense eucalypti with their continued fluttering and chirruping; the young birds are easily picked up from the ground and taken from the trees by the hand; and it is here where the Australian birdcatchers get all the Budgerigars that come to us from the Antipodes. They fill their bags of an evening with birds, and on reaching home put them up in boxes, holding one to two hundred each; these are taken to Adelaide and are sold to captains of vessels on the point of leaving for London, or they are sent to Melbourne and Sydney, and reach us via these ports.

In seasons of drought the birds migrate to the far north of Australia, and none are then to be met with at all in the south; and as we have no trading ports in Northern Australia to speak of, no Budgerigars will then be brought to the English market. The dealers here will then take advantage of the cessation of arrivals, and rapidly advance the prices for those remaining in their hands; it is this continually varying supply and scarcity which causes the large fluctuations in the prices of Budgerigars. Many a small fortune has been made in former years by enterprising skippers, who brought large numbers over to England, which they sold here in the docks at 1. or 17. 10s. a pair, and which cost them out in Adelaide about 1s. 6d. each. One ship would often bring from five to fifteen hundred pairs, for which in the early days of the fancy there were always eager buyers. The first pair of Budgerigars ever brought alive to England was purchased by my father for 227.-about twenty-six years ago; since then the importations have yearly increased, and the prices been proportionally reduced until recently they NEW SERIES.-VOL. XXXIII., No. 5

could be purchased retail at 8s. per pair.

On the continent the fancy for foreign aviary birds has always been much more spread than here. In Belgium it was found that Budgerigars not only stood the climate of the cold winter months very well, but also that they bred in confinement in a surprising manner; many people therefore made it a pecuniary speculation to keep large numbers of them for breeding purposes, and at times, when the produce could be sold at high prices, very handsome incomes were made by their sale. Indeed the great peculiarity of Budgerigars is their prolificness, for when once mated a pair will go on reproducing at so rapid a rate that the young of one brood, while still unfledged in the nest, will find themselves in company with the eggs of the following brood, and thus, unwittingly, through the warmth of their bodies, contribute toward the hatching of the younger family.

The plumage of the male and female Budgerigar is exactly alike, and now too well known to need further description; but what may not be known so well is the means of distinguishing the one from the other. The only external difference of the male from the female bird is in the color of the cere at the root of the upper mandible, which is dark blue in the former and brown or grayish in the latter. Imported birds begin to pair in October and November, which period corresponds with early summer in their native home. When breeding they should be fed with ants' eggs mixed with bread crumbs and hard-boiled eggs, in addition to their staple food of canary seed. Let their nesting-box be an empty cocoanut shell, with a hole in the upper half sufficiently large to admit one bird at a time. In this cocoanut the hen bird will lay her eggs. As no nest is made, it is not necessary to place any nest-building materials into the cage, but it is advisable to sprinkle the bottom of the nestingbox with a little silver sand, so that the eggs rest on a firm layer, and do not roll against one another and so get injured. When the young ones make their appearance, the busy time of the parents fairly sets in, for these youngsters are continually crying for food, and are

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as assiduously waited upon by both the old birds.

On account of their hardy nature these birds could be easily acclimatized to our native fields and forests. Indeed, several attempts have been made by turning out a number into private demesnes, where, however, they have been usually caught away or shot by strangers. They ought, therefore, to be specially protected by Act of Parliament to thrive here. If so, there is no doubt Budgerigars would soon become indigenous, and be a pretty addition to the fauna of our woods and parks. A. E. JAMRACH.

POLAR BEARS.

The late Mr. Frank Buckland, in referring to the two young Polar bears brought to the Zoological Gardens in Regent's Park this winter, wrote: Not much is known of the habits of Polar bears. They are said to hibernate about Christmas time, and to come out in April. They get under the snow, and make a kind of nest deep down in the snow heap, and they go to sleep till the weather softens. The short summer in the Arctic regions is very hot, and at this time the Polar bears live upon the fruits and vegetable food. At other times their food consists principally of seals, walrus, and the smaller whales and fish. They are excellent swimmers, and very artful divers, and often get a seal dinner by diving long distances, and so surprising the sleeping seal. They are generally attracted to whalingships from great distances by smell of the boiling blubber. These expeditions generally end by the Polar bear losing his great-coat. The Esquimaux state that in the fur of the Polar bear there is a peculiar repellent power of snow, and that when they come in covered with snow it is a custom to brush off their fur dresses with a piece of Polar bear fur. A Polar bear having to walk nearly all his life upon snow and ice, wears natural snow-shoes which prevent him slipping. The visitor to the gardens should therefore observe that the soles of the Polar bear's foot are not naked pads like those of the lion who has to deal with sand in his hunting expeditions, but that the soles of the bear's feet are well padded with hair, which assists him to climb about the slippery icebergs.

BLIND MICE AND BLIND RATS.

Mr. Edward Whymper, in his fascinating volume on the Ascent of the Matterhorn," mentions a curious incident. dent. In 1874 he went to photograph the summit of the mountain which he had been the first to ascend nine years before. In order to get the morning light, he passed the night in the Cabane or hut on the Zermatt side, the altitude of which is about 12,250 feet. "While quietly reposing inside, I was startled to hear a rustling and crackling sound, and jumped up, expecting that the building was about to take itself off to lower quarters; and presently I perceived that the hut had a tenant to whom I certainly did not expect to be introduced." A little plump mouse caine creeping over the floor, being apparently of opinion that there ought not to be any one there at that time. It wandered about, picking up stray fragments of food, occasionally crunching a bit of egg-shell, totally unaware of my presence, for I made out that the little animal was both blind and deaf. It would have been easy to capture it, but I would not do so, and left it there to keep company with other solitary tourists.

How this little blind wanderer made its way to such a place, at such a height, is a mystery, as is the cause of its blindness. It may have been from the snowglare in its case; but the infirmity appears to be common in the species. We remember the refrain of the old nursery song, "Three blind mice." Why blind as an epithet, and not plump, or brown, or white, or any other sort of mice, if blindness is not often observed in them ? Blind rats are also often met with. The story of one of these being conducted by others to its feeding-place, by means of a straw held in its mouth, is well known.

Nor is this a solitary instance. One evening a gentleman was out walking in the meadows, when he met a company of rats all going in one direction. Now as he knew a great deal about rats, he soon guessed what they were doingleaving their old home, and going to seek another somewhere else-and so he watched them. In the middle of the crowd of rats he saw one poor old one that seemed quite blind, and walked very slowly, but that was no reason why he.

a little closer, he found that one of its friends was leading the poor old rat along by a piece of wood, which they held between them in their mouths, and his guide took care of him, as a child would of a father or mother if they were blind. This anecdote is given in a pleasant book for the young, Little Animals described for Little People" (Seeleys). The feeling shown by this creature reminds us of the filial affection of "pious Æneas' carrying off old Anchises, his father, in the flight from Troy !

The following incident is narrated by a French writer on natural history, and has every appearance of being authentic.

The circumstances were attested by an eye-witness, a German officer of scrupulous and judicious observation, who wrote to one of his friends concerning what had lately occurred before his eyes.

"I was this morning in bed," says he, "and was reading, when I was interrupted suddenly by a noise like that which rats make when they climb up the wainscot or party-wall. I watched very attentively, and I saw a rat make its ap pearance under the side of a hole.

It

looked about on every side, and then

retired.

"Soon after, it appeared a second time, conducting by the ear a rat larger than himself, and which appeared to be an old one. Having left it at the side of the hole, another young rat joined the former one, and both together traversed my chamber, picking up small pieces of biscuit, which had fallen from the table at supper time the previous evening. They then carried these crumbs to the old one at the side of the hole.

I no

"This attention of the animals astonished me. I observed them with greater care, and I came to the conclusion that the old rat to which the other two rats brought something to eat was blind, because it did not find but by touch the biscuit which they held out to it. longer doubted that the two young ones were its children, and the assiduous providers for a blind parent. I admired in my mind the wisdom of nature, which has implanted in all animals an intuitive tenderness, and a gratitude, I might almost say a virtue, proportioned to their faculties.

"While I was making these reflec

The Rev. F. O. Morris sends the fol

lowing note from a captain in the 60th Rifles, living in Devonshire, giving an instance of the clever sagacity for which rats are well known. "The other day a son of mine, about eleven, came to me and said that through a chink in the floor he could see a rat rolling something that seemed like an egg. I got a saw and cut away the board, and found seven perfectly fresh eggs, not a crack in cracked a couple with my saw, and we any except where I had unfortunately could see that they were quite freshly broken. The nursery (the room in question) is up-stairs, and as none of the hens

ever lay within thirty or forty yards, and time they (the rats) went to work, or the eggs are collected every day, at what how they got them up the stairs, I cannot imagine. We had often missed by the evening the eggs we had seen in the morning, and thought that the hens had eaten them; they never took an addled nest-egg.

A DOG'S ENDURANCE.

A few summers ago a shepherd was employed at Benmore, Kilmun, in sheepshearing. For this purpose the sheep are gathered out of the hills into inclosures surrounded by stone walls about four and a half feet high, out of which they are drawn as required. On one of these occasions his dog, my friend "Gyle," came to grief. Some one had carelessly left a very sharp scythe in such a position behind the wall that the dog in jumping over completely severed the muscle of the off hind leg, three quarters of an inch above the hock. Being a very valuable dog, the shepherd took him to the nearest surgeon, who gave it as his opinion that he might re