tate.

The manner in which Mr. Strachey had knocked about the world among people prompt with the hand, had familiarized him with a line of practice which he might not have acquired had he spent all his days in Gray's Inn. His plan was to seize upon the priests, make short work with them, and convert chiefs and people to Christianity after the recipe of the Reverend Mr. Simondes, preacher of St. Saviour's.

his book was necessarily controversial. The set-tetuting our daughters to straungers, sacrificing our tlement of colonies in America was opposed in childrene to idolls, nay, eating our owne childrene, those days, more vehemently than in ours, with as did the Scots in those daies, as reciteth Tho. excuses which our days have not when the vast Cogan, bachellor of phisick, in his booke, De Saniresults of the perseverance of Raleigh and his successors are seen. One class of these opponents, looking at the failure of the expeditions of Raleigh and several others, pronounced the country unfit for settlement, and urged that such schemes were Utopian and should be abandoned; besides which, Spain had a title to the whole of North America. Another class stood up for the rights of the "naturalls," or, as we now phrase it, the aborigines. It was, therefore, the business of Secretary Strachey to show, on one hand, that the Although controversy, in spirit or in form, country was well qualified for colonization; that makes a good portion of the book, there is much former settlements had failed, owing to the mis- of pure description; which, independently of its conduct of the settlers; and that the Pope's bull, own merit, has interest as being one of the few and the claims of Spain, where she had not dis-original sketches of the people of America by a Of this more direct descripcovered and settled, were nothing. On the other competent observer. hand, he had to establish, from history and reason, tion we will take a geological passage, exceedthat the advent of a superior people always im-ingly just and well-reasoned for the age. proved the inferior, and to unfold from religion the great benefit as well as bounden duty of converting heathens to the Christian faith. The following passage may be taken as an example of his general and historical reasoning.

All the low land of South and North Virginia is conjectured to have bene naturally gayned out of the sea; for the sea, through his impetuous and vast revolution, (who knowes not,) savinge upon every coast, in some places wyns, and in other places looseth; and we find within the shoares of But yet it is injurious to the naturall inhabitants, our rivers, whole bancks of oysters and scallopps, still saye ours. Wherefore? It is because yt is, which lye unopened and thick together, as if there nowe indeede, a most doughtie and mat[er]iall had bene their naturall bedd before the sea left reason, a great piece of injury to bring them (to them; likewise, the fashion of the earth is in smale invert our English proverb) out of the warme sun, risinge mounts, which may well be supposed that into God's blessing; to bring them from bodily the violence of the wynd hath cawsed, by dryving wants, confusion, misery, and these outward the light sand togither; moreover, the mould and anguishes, to the knowledg of a better practize, sword of the earth is not two foot deepe all along and ymproving of those benefitts (to a more and neare the sea; and that which is, comes only by ever duringe advantage, and to a civiler use) which the grasse, and leaves of trees, and such rubbish, God hath given unto them, but envolved and hid in rotting upon it in contynuance of time; for in digthe bowells and womb of their land (to them barren ging but a fathome or two, we commonly find quick and unprofitable, because unknowne ;) nay, to ex- sand. Againe, under the crust of the surfage, we alt, as I may saie, meere privation to the highest find not any stones nor rocks, (except neere the degree of perfection, by bringing their wretched high land,) naie, in most places to soward, not so soules (like Cerberus, from hell) from the chaynes much as a pebble-stone, which must proceed of Sathan, to the armes and bosome of their Saviour: through want of tyme, that no duration hath there here is a most impious piece of injury. Let me ben wrought; besides, the water ebbs and flowes remember what Mr. Símondes, preacher of St. well nigh unto the heades of all the rivers, (I Saviour's, saith in this behalf: It is as much, saith meane to the falls, unto the high land,) and the he, as if a father should be said to offer violence to natives which now people with us, on this side behis child, when he beats him to bring him to good-neath the said falls, are conceaved not to have nesse. Had not this violence and this injury bene inhabited here belowe much more than three hunoffred to us by the Romans (as the warlike Scots did the same, likewise, in Caledonia, unto the Picts,) even by Julius Cæsar himself, then by the The volume is well edited, without overdoing; emperour Claudius, who was therefore called and Mrs. Major has enriched it with some clever Britannicus, and his captains, Aulus Plautius and etchings from publications contemporary with Vespatian (who tooke in the Isle of Wight;) and Strachey, which illustrate the persons and houses lastly, by the first lieutenant sent hither, Ostorius of the then inhabitants of Virginia. Scapula, (as writes Tacitus in the lief of Agricola,) who reduced the conquered partes of our barbarous iland into provinces, and established in them col

dred years.

From Fraser's Magazine.

onies of old souldiers; building castells and townes LEAVES FROM THE NOTE-BOOK OF A NATU

RALIST.

PART II.

GREAT as have been the advantages of menage

and in every corner teaching us even to knowe the powerfull discourse of divine reason (which makes us only men, and distinguisheth us from beasts, amongst whome we lived as naked and as beastly as they,) we might yet have lyved overgrowen satyrs, rude and untutred, wandring in the woodes, ries, in bringing immediately under the eyes of dwelling in caves, and hunting for our dynners, as every observer animals which would otherwise be the wild beasts in the forrests for their praye, pros- hardly known, except from books, or from their

remains preserved in museums, they have, it must of a hunger sharpened by days of watching on be confessed, been fatal to romance. The exag- the wing, in the eager air of a very high altitude, gerated proportions which travellers have assigned is not easily appeased. The bird, rioting in the to birds and beasts-ay, and men-partly from midst of the plentiful table which death has spread seeing the objects at a distance, and partly from for it in the wilderness, after tearing up the hide the highly-colored and, in many instances, imper- with its trenchant beak, carves out and swallows fectly understood accounts of the natives, shrink gobbet after gobbet, till it is so gorged as to be when the living creature is before the spectator. unable to raise itself on the wing. This the In such cases truth-like the best pictures of the | Indians well know, and when they have a mind Italian masters, which are not satisfactory at first, for a battue they set forth a dead horse or cow, especially to those who have admired the extrava-and quietly watch the progress of the repast, gances, however poetical, of a Fuseli-looks which is sure to be attended by the condors, some poorly; and it is only after consideration that the mind becomes reconciled to the light, before which errors and false pretensions vanish.

How many who have read of the condor till he has been almost magnified into the roc of Arabian story, have been disappointed at the first sight of those birds which have been kept so long at the garden of the Zoological Society of London! I can hardly call to mind one who has so seen them in my presence whose expectations had not gone far beyond what he then saw. To say nothing of more general romantic statements, eighteen feet have been given as the actual measurement across the expanded wings of the great vulture of the Andes. The old male belonging to the society, a very fine specimen, measures eleven feet from tip to tip when his wings are outstretched; his length does not exceed four feet nine inches. Both he and his partner, notwithstanding their confinement —a confinement which must be peculiarly irksome and unnatural to a bird, the greater portion of whose free life is spent on the wing, sailing in the higher regions of the atmosphere, far above the throne of clouds of the

Giant of the western star,

appear to enjoy good health, proofs of which have been given in their attempts to continue the species, notwithstanding their unfavorable situation.

as

In a state of nature the eggs of the condor are said to rest on the rock, without stick or straw, and unprotected by any border. There, at an elevation of from ten to fifteen thousand feet above the level of the sea, on such ledges and plateaux "The Condor's Look-out,' "The Condor's Nest," ," "The Condor's Roost," the nestling first breathes the highly rarified air. A year elapses, it is asserted, before the downy young one is sufficiently plumed to leave the mother. About the end of the second year the color is a yellowish brown, and, up to this time, the gollila or ruff is not visible, whence probably arises the notion that there are two species of condors, one black, (the color of the adult,) and one brown. Flying to a more lofty pitch than any other bird, and reduced in the sight of the upward gazer, amid the grand and gigantic scenery, to the size of hawks, they wheel round, keeping their telescopic eyes on the valleys, watching for the fall of some failing horse or cow. Then down come the condors to the feast. In their daintiness they generally begin with the tongue and the eyes, but the rage

of them being almost always on their watch far aloft. When they are well gorged, and looking on each other with gluttonous gravity, the Indians make their appearance with the deadly lasso. Then comes a scene of excitement, gladdening the heart of the sportsman only a degree less than the stimulating bull-fight. The lassos are thrown with more or less success. Some are fast, others contrive to scramble away: but when a condor is caught there is a fight, and a stout one, before it is killed; and, indeed, the stories told of its tenacity of life would be incredible were they not attested by trustworthy witnesses.

Humboldt shall be called to make out a strong case. He was present when the Indians tried to overcome the vitality of one which they had taken alive. Having strangled it with a lasso, they hanged it on a tree, pulling it forcibly by the feet for several minutes, in a manner that would have done credit to Mr. Calcraft and his assistants. The execution being apparently over, the lasso was removed: the bird got up, and walked about as if nothing had happened. A pistol was then fired at it, the man who fired standing within less than four paces. Three balls hit the living mark,

wounding it in the neck, chest, and abdomen; the bird kept its legs. A fourth ball broke its thigh. Then the condor fell, but it did not die of its wounds till half an hour had elapsed. This bird was preserved by M. Bonpland. Such direct and unimpeachable evidence should make us pause before we hastily discredit the accounts of older writers. Ulloa was thought to have used a traveller's privilege when he asserted, that in the colder localities of Peru the condor is so closely protected by its feathery armor, that eight or ten balls might be heard to strike without penetrating, or, at least, bringing down the bird.

Not that we give credence to the stories of the condor's carrying off children—indeed, the evidence is against such a statement; and still less do we believe the accounts of their attacking men and women. At all events, Sir Francis Head has proved that a Cornish miner is a match for one of these great vultures. Humboldt allows that two of them would be dangerous foes when opposed to one man; but he frequently came within ten or twelve feet of the rock on which three or four of them were perched, and they never offered to molest him. Indeed, the Alpine lämmergeyer, the

*Gypaetus barbatus, Storr.

made a small turn and sat down about ten yards something from my appearance, I know not, but he from me, the pan with the meat being between me and him. As the field was clear before me, and I did not know but his next move might bring him opposite to one of my people, and so that he might actually get the rest of the meat and make off, I shot him with the ball through the middle of his body, about two inches below the wing, so that he lay down upon the grass without a single flutter.

Bruce gives the following dimensions of this daring bird :—

Phene of Aristotle and Elian, is little inferior, | is coming! he is coming!" enough to have disif not equal, to the condor in size, and, like the couraged a less courageous animal. Whether he condor, haunts great mountain-chains. As the was not quite so hungry as at first, or suspected condor is the great vulture of the New World, this vulture-eagle holds its throne on the lofty precipices of the old continent. On the Swiss and German Alps, from Piedmont to Dalmatia, in the Pyrenees, in the mountains of Ghilan and Siberia, of Egypt and Abyssinia, this, the largest of the European birds of prey, is on the watch to scourge the country. With more of the eagle than the vulture in its composition, and with claws more fit for rapine than the nails of the condor, it generally seeks for a living prey, and, soaring with its mate above the hills and valleys, pounces upon the lambs and other quadrupeds. The stories of its having carried off children in its crooked talons wear a much greater air of probability than such tales when applied to the condor, with its comparatively impotent foot. The strength of the lämmergeyer and its conformation are quite equal to such murderous acts; for a full-grown one is four feet from beak to tail, and nine or ten in alar extent. But the lämmergeyer contents itself with a dead prey when no better may be had, and Bruce gives an anecdote of its pertinacity and audacity on one of these occasions so graphically, that it would be unjust to the reader to give it in other than the slandered Abyssinian traveller's own words :

Upon the highest top of the mountain Lamalmon, while the servants were refreshing themselves from that toilsome, rugged ascent, and enjoying the pleasure of a most delightful climate, eating their dinner in the outer air, with several large dishes of boiled goat's flesh before them, this enemy, as he turned out to be to them, appeared suddenly. He did not stoop rapidly from a height, but came flying slowly along the ground, and sat down close to the meat, within the ring the men had made round it. A great shout, or rather cry of distress, called me to the place. I saw the eagle stand for a minute, as if to recolleet himself, while the servants ran for their lances and shields. I walked up as near to him as I had time to do. His attention was fully fixed upon the flesh. I saw him put his foot into the pan, where was a large piece in water, prepared for boiling; but finding the smart which he had not expected, he withdrew it, and forsook this piece which he held.

There were two large pieces, a leg and a shoulder, lying upon a wooden platter; into these he trussed both his claws, and carried them off; but I thought he looked wistfully at the large piece which remained in the warm water. Away he went slowly along the ground as he had come.

From wing to wing he was eight feet four inches; from the tip of his tail to the point of his beak, when dead, four feet seven inches; he weighed twenty-two pounds, and was very full of It affords preg

flesh.

But return we to our condor.

nant evidence of the care and attention exerted by the authorities and keepers of the animals confined in the garden of the Zoological Society of London in the Regent's Park, when we find that so many of them have not only shown a disposition to breed in their captivity, but that not a few have actually reared healthy offspring under all the disadvantages which a life so different from that intended by Nature must, under any circumstances, produce. Some of these instances, if our notes find favor in your eye, dear reader, will be hereafter given. At present we beg attention to one where, with every wish to continue the species, the parents seemed to give up incubation as hopeless.

At the time the present note was taken the female condor in the Regent's Park had laid seven eggs. The first was laid on the 4th of March, 1844; the second on the 29th of April of the same year; the third on the 28th of February, 1845; the fourth on the 24th of April in that year; the fifth on the 8th of February, 1846; the sixth on the third of April, 1846; and the seventh on the 7th of May, 1847.

On one occasion I saw the condors with a

newly-laid white egg, some three or four inches long, lying on the naked floor of their prison. There was no appearance of a nest of any kind, and there was something melancholy and yet ludicrous in the hopeless expression with which both the parents looked down at it. They regarded the egg and then each other, as if they would have said, if they could, "What are we to do with it now we have got it?"

And the mute

mutual answer of their forlorn eyes and dejected heads was, evidently, "Nothing."

The face of the cliff over which criminals are thrown took him from our sight. The Mahometans that drove the asses, who had suffered from the hyæna, were much alarmed, and assured me of his Well, at last it was proposed that as soon as return. My servants, on the other hand, very another egg was laid it should be placed under a unwillingly expected him, and thought he had hen. Accordingly, on the 7th of May, at halfalready more than his share.

As I had myself a desire of more intimate ac- past seven o'clock, A. M., (I must be pardoned for quaintance with him, I loaded a rifle gun with ball, being somewhat particular on such an occasion,) and sat down close to the platter by the meat. It the newly-laid egg was put under a good motherwas not many minutes before he came, and a pro- ly-looking nurse of the Dorking breed, and as the digious shout was raised by my attendants, "He colors of hens as well as of horses are worthy

of note, let it be remembered that her color was attention of the hen? Her duty with her own white inclining to buff.

eggs is to hatch chickens that run very soon after The place of incubation was a cage elevated they have left the egg-shell, but till they are some distance above the floor in one of the strong enough to be able to trust to their lower aviaries. The hen sat very close. Day after extremities she keeps them close, "hiving them," day, week after week, passed away; still the ex- as the old wives say, carefully, till these lower cellent nurse continued to sit. Day after day, extremities, which are, in the nestlings of the week after week, again rolled on, and the usual gallinaceous tribe, first well developed, shall be period at which the anxious feathered mother sufficiently strong to carry them in search of food beholds her natural offspring was left far behind. and out of danger. The hen, in this instance, Still the good nurse sat on, till at last after an finds that her Garagantua of a chick cannot walk, incubation of fifty-four days, the young condor, on and therefore goes on cherishing it and sitting the 30th of June, 1846, about six o'clock in the close over it. I saw it fed about three o'clock in morning, began to break the wall of its procreant the afternoon upon part of a young rabbit, nearly prison. The process of hatching was very slow. the whole of which it had consumed in the course The young bird was not extricated from the egg of yesterday and to-day. When brought out it until after twenty-seven hours, nor was it then shivered its callow wings and opened its mouth released on the morning of the 1st of July-like other nestlings, but it then uttered no cry. without the assistance of the keeper, who found It made much use of the tongue in taking the food it necessary to remove the shell, as the membrane and in deglutition. had got dry round the nestling. Thus came into this best of all possible worlds the first condor hatched in England. It had an odd appearance, and seemed to wonder how it had got here. The head appeared to be misshapen, for on the top of it was what looked like an amorphous bladder of water contained between the external skin and the skull. This gradually disappeared, and when I first sawing vehemently and oddly. it, on the same first of July, about four o'clock in the afternoon, the head was properly shaped. It was naked, and of a dark lead color; and such was the hue of the just visible comb (showing that it was a male) and of the naked feet. With these exceptions the young bird was covered with a dirty white down, and looked healthy and vigorous. On the evening of the day on which it was hatched it ate part of the liver of a young rabbit. The young condor was fed five times each day with the fleshy parts of young rabbits; at each feed a piece about the size of a walnut was given, and it was very fond of the liver. For the first ten days it was fed, and after that time it pecked the food from the hand of the keeper. It took no water, nor was any forced on it.

I find, also, the following in my note-book :— July 18.-The young condor continues to thrive apace, and the good hen that hatched the egg from which this portentous chick sprung still remains in the elevated cage, and seems very much attached to her charge. When feeding for which purpose she quits the nestling only twice a day, hurrying back as if anxious to resume her duty she is fussy and fidgetty (if there be such words) till her hasty meals are ended. The young condor's down is now changed to a more gray hue, and the germs of the true feathers begin to show themselves. The head and neck have become blacker, and the budding excrescence of the comb advances. The upper mandible of the bill is slightly movable. The lower extremities are become darker and very stout, but as yet too weak to support the bird's weight.

On my return from making these observations I went to look at the old condors. Military bands were playing, and the wind was very high. Both birds were very much excited, the male especially. He spread and flapped his wings, pursuing the female, as she walked backwards from him, with his beak opposite and close to hers, and gesticulat

The next entry is a sad one :

July 21, 1846.-The young condor, after thriving well to all appearance, died this morning. The good hen, which had been most attentive to it to the last, seemed to miss it much. The cry of the young condor resembled the squeak of a rat, and the dwelling-place of the hen and her charge was infested by those predacious rodents. Sometimes they would squeak, and then the bereaved foster-mother would approach the hole whence the squeak proceeded, listen, and abide there clucking, as if in hope of seeing her charge come forth.

In this case I was struck with the modification of instinct, or rather of the adjunct of something closely resembling a reasoning power, on the part of the hen. In general, as soon as the days of her incubation are fulfilled the hen leaves the nest, if the eggs are addled, or have not been hatched from some other cause. But here she continued to sit more than double the usual time without moving except for the purpose of taking food. Might it not be that she felt that life was in progress under her, and that her σrogyn (storge) prevailed with her not to abandon the embryo till the fulness of its time was come ?*

* "We cannot but admire with Harvey," says Willughby, some of these natural instincts of birds, viz., that almost all hen-birds should, with such diligence and patience, sit upon their nests night and day for a long time together, macerating and almost starving themselves to death; that they should expose themselves to such dangers in defence of their eggs; and if, being constrained, they sometimes leave them a little while, with such ear nestness hasten back to them and cover them. Ducks and geese, while they are absent for a little while, diligently cover up their eggs with straw. With what courage and weak-magnanimity do even the most cowardly birds defend their eggs, which sometimes are subventaneous and addle, or not their own, or even artificial ones. Stupendous in

May not this local, but no doubt natural ness, point to the solution of the continued close

Again I observed that she made no attempt to solicit the young condor to feed, as hens do with their own chickens. She seemed to regard it as something incomprehensible, but belonging to her; and looked on with evident complacency when the keeper took it out to feed it on raw flesh, receiving it, after its meal, under her wings with a ⚫comforting cluck.

Of the condors, two males and one female are now alive in the garden of the society; but no egg has been laid since that whose history we have attempted to give was deposited.

but

In the same garden the king vulture—this looke very like poor dear Theodore Hook's story of the cock maccaw's laying eggs-has laid, but it never sat. The Chinese vulture has done the same, It is a well-known aphorism that the more per- never attempted incubation. The wedge-tailed fect the order of the animal is, the larger is the eagle of New Holland, and the lämmergeyer size of its offspring when it first enters into life. sighing for her mate and her mountains, have Thus, as John Hunter observes, a new-born quad-dropped eggs, but never attempted incubation. ruped is nearer to the size of the parents than a The eagle ow}* entered upon the business of the bird just hatched, and a bird nearer than a fish. continuation of the species with greater energy Something may be, therefore, attributed to the and gravity. She laid and sat, but sat in vain; disproportioned bulk of the young condor; but not an owlet rewarded her anxiety. true as the maxim is, it does not follow that the The white-headed eagles seemed very much in parent has the power of distinguishing size. In earnest. Of them the reader may know more birds such a power probably does not exist; for hereafter, if he should choose to kill time by takwe know that the hedge-sparrow and other small ing up a continuation of these notes. birds will go on feeding the enormous young cuckoo till the poor benevolent dupes are almost exhausted, before and after the intruder has shouldered out their own eggs and little nestlings.

This, we are told, is a world of compensation, though the compensation is too often terribly on one side, as in the often-repeated case of Englishmen being called upon to pay for "the vested The sight of the helpless young condor could interests" of a nuisance that would not be tolerated not fail to raise reflections in the most unobserv- for three months in any city of civilized Europe ing. There was the comparatively minute form, except London-Smithfield Market, for instance. which, if its life had been spared, would have But still this best of all possible worlds is a world been developed to gigantic proportions: and that of compensation. In obedience to this law, Mr. little, feeble, plumeless wing, was formed to bear Yarrell, in his excellent History of British Birds, quill-feathers from two to three feet in length. has recorded a most interesting account of a buzThese noble quills are used as pens in the Cordil-zard hatching chickens, in order, no doubt, to lera; and in this country I have seen them trans- balance the fact of a hen hatching a condor. formed into floats for the angler, of a size and finish to satisfy the most fastidious dandy disciple of good honest Izaak Walton.

The

A solitary male buzzard in our time made desperate love to the shoe of the gardener of the Physic Garden at Oxford, with the gardener's foot Two other raptorial birds come into the group, in the said shoe; but Mr. Yarrell's story relates though one of them, the California vulture, wants to the gentler sex, and he prefaces it with an ob the caruncle which distinguishes the condor. The servation as to the extreme partiality of the comother is the king of the vultures.* The brilliant mon buzzard for the seasonal task of incubation colors of the head and neck of this last project it and rearing young birds. upon the notice of the visitor who passes the place The bird mentioned by Mr. Yarrell was kept of its confinement; and there is reason for believ-in the garden of the Chequers, in the good town ing that the stories told of the other vultures, in of Uxbridge, of ineffectual treaty memory. their free and natural state, standing respectfully poor bird-she was well known to many a brother aloof till their king has finished his repast, are of the angle, "now," as old Izaak hath it, “with not groundless, the respect being probably due to God"-manifested her inclination to frame a nest the superior courage of the monarch. by gathering and twisting about all the loose sticks she could lay beak and claw on. The good mas ter of the house had compassion on her, furnishe her with twigs and all appliances and means boot, and the solitary creature went to work ar d Two hens' completed a nest. eggs were past under her; she hatched them well and reared them bravely. Her desire to sit was indicated by scratching holes in the garden, and breaking and tearing everything within reach of beak and talons. Year after year did she hatch and bring up a goodly troop of chickens, and in 1831 her brood consisted of nine, after the loss of one, for she had brought out ten. Upon one occasion her kind master, to save her from what he thought the ennui of sitting, put down to her a newly hatched * Buteo vulgaris,

truth is the love of birds to a dull and lifeless egg, and which is not likely with the least profit or pleasure to recompense so great pains and care. Who can but admire the passionate affection, or rather fury, of a clucking hen, which cannot be extinguished unless she be drenched in cold water? During this impetus of mind, she neglects all things, and, as if she were in a frenzy, lets down her wings, and bristles up her feathers, and walks up and down reckless and querulous, puts other hens off their

nests, searching everywhere for eggs to sit upon; neither doth she give over till she hath either found eggs to sit or chickens to bring up; which she doth, with wonderful zeal and passion, call together, cherish, feed, and defend. What a pretty ridiculous spectacle is it to see a hen following a bastard brood of young ducklings (which she bath hatched for her own) swimming in the water! How she often compasses the place, sometimes venturing in, not without danger, as far as she can wade, and calls upon them, using all her art and industry to allure them to her." *Or, King Vulture-Sarcoramphus Papa-Vultur Papa, Lina.

* Strix Bubo.