THE MAGAZINE OF NATURAL HISTORY. JANUARY, 1833. ORIGINAL COMMUNICATIONS. ART. I. Chit-chat. No. II. By JOHN F. M. DOVASTON, Esq. A.M., of Westfelton, near Shrewsbury. "So water, trembling in a polish'd vase, Now strikes the roof, now flashes on the walls." Virgil. Æn. viii. 22. &c., trans. SCENE - The library, Westfelton. TIME- After dinner. DOVASTON and VON OSDAT. Dovaston. STORMY and loud, the wind roars among the labouring woods, and howls through the trees in gigantic harmonies. Von Os. With now and then a double diapason in the chimney-tunnels; as though Polypheme of capacious mouth accompanied the hailstone chorus over his Pan's-pipe of stupendous reeds. Dov. I hope he will not cut any of them down to concert pitch. Von Os. While here we sit snug and cheery; a good fire blazing beside us; good liquor, nuts, and fruits, before us; and around us, in mute but intellectual array, multitudes of the Mighty Dead. Dov. The Living, rather. Often when alone, I imagine a Library like a cozie corner of Elysium; where a select assembly of the fanciful, the philosophic, the enlightened, and the learned condescendingly administer to the instruction or amusement of their less-gifted guests. Von Os. Secluded from the cold and callous world without: its toils and tumults, noises and nonsenses; which, by fancy and reflection, the quiet mind may convert into playthings. I have just now been shutting my eyes, and comparing the uproar of these woods to the distant swells and falls of the troubled and tumbling ocean. I once caught a glimpse of Caernarfon Castle; its tall towers glimmering in the hectic light of a wet and stormy sunbeam. Dov. Poor Joe Warren Von Os. Oh! long and late beloved; oh! early lost : "his bright and brief career is o'er." Dov. Ay. Poor Joe Von Os. whose warm heart and brilliant fancy would frequently play off more jets of joyance in a momentary conversation, than we could pump into a day's discourse, Dov. felt intense delight while listening to my descriptions of scenery, after any of my long summer excursions. One evening after tolerating, to some length, my attempt to give him something like an outline of The Trossachs-the strange, abrupt, wild, and beautiful succession of stupendous wonders in those roaring and romantic passes in Perthshire; - laying down his pipe, he suddenly sprung up, exclaiming, "Come into the garden, and I will show you how to see a Trossach." Von Os. What! amid the mills and machinery of StrathMorda, as ye called it? Dov. Even there. Hard by, you know, there is a prodigious overshot dam of a millpool on the Morda. He now bade me keep my eyes absolutely and constantly shut, and, taking my arm, walked me slowly about the garden, colouring, as he well could do, with his cannie and courteous voice, and painter's powers, the outline I had just been sketching. Von Os. Excellent! I begin to see them now myself. Dov. Sometimes, on suddenly turning the corner of a walk, he would squeeze his kind hand close on one of my ears; and, on turning another corner, would suddenly take it off: so that, what with the powerful torrent, mingled with the various noises of the distant mills and machinery, his glowing descriptions, and soul-enkindling names, I soon found myself among the uproar and ecstasies of those romantic regions: soon, under the sprays of dangling birches, entered those awful and tremendous portals, on narrow paths of rocks, with narrower skylight of fleecy blue, meeting the white and stunning torrents, tumbling and tearing among their massy and ponderous fragments, overhung with dismal crags, mantled with oak and old birches, that wave their venerable tresses over deep and dark abysms, and insulated rocks shaggy with long hoary heather; millions of spikes, grey with lichens and green with moss, assuming the fantastic forms of castles, turrets, towers, and battlements, pyramids and pinnacles: and over all, moving as I moved along, just the tip of Ben An, like a single stone, flaring in sunshine. Now the path somewhat smoother, and the noises somewhat subdued; then bursting out again, from gloom to gleam, from uproar to serenity; till at length Loch Katherine gleamed expansive in blazing and intense glory, with the full height of the lofty Ben An, and the purple side of Benvenue, terminated with the terrific and rugged cliffs of the frightful Mealaonah, all peacefully reposing in the blessed sunbeams of evening: "So wond'rous rich, the whole might seem The scenery of a fairy dream." Von Os. Bravo! I shall remember this; and hereafter put into requisition our poor friend's recipe, "How to see a Trossach." Dov. Closing his own eyes, to enjoy the creations of his own fancy, one of us tumbled over the garden roller; and the other upon some rockwork, to the destruction of sundry specimens of sedum, saxifrage, and navelwort. Von Os. "Tilly valley! Sir John." Dov. What the devil do you mean by Tilly valley? Von Os. Why what has all this to do with natural history? Dov. Just as much as yonder nuthatch, so pertinaciously picking a bone on the ornithotrophe. Von Os. Mine is fixed on a post, and the cats often rob it. I see the trencher is much better when suspended by three wires, like a scale, from a ring to slide along a line, stretched from the window to a tree. Dov. And ye may have two or more on the same line, trimmed with bones, seeds, and various food; piercing the trencher with a few holes, to let out the wet. It is extremely amusing to see the various birds that so become familiar; and I find many gentle-minded people, since Bewick published in his Preface an extract from one of my letters describing it, have adopted my pleasing little machine, that I jocularly called the ornithotrophe. Von Os. Do you think these birds are the same individuals who frequent that hung before your dining-room windows? Dov. A few may frequent both: but, in general, I am certain all birds have their particular beats, or haunts; and very rarely intrude on those of others; when the invaded never omit repelling the forcible entry, by taking the law into their own hands. Robins have their own beats, even on the different sides of a small cottage: there are four distinct pairs of robins around this house; and one is attached exclusively to my brewhouse. In the wide and wild woods, too, I am certain they keep to the same beats; as I noticed for months by the singularly loud, and unusual sort of, song in one belonging to the great cedar of Lebanon near my south entrance: and another, while I was working in a wood, lit on the handle of my spade, while I was eating my bread and cheese; this I chanced to catch, and, marking him with a scissors by a black cross on his breast, I found he continually kept to the same spot. Von Os. How pugnaciously they will fight! There is a Greek proverb, That two robins will not inhabit the same bush. Should you think the word erithiacus derived from the Greek word signifying strife, which it much resembles? Dov. It may: though it still more nearly resembles another Greek word signifying red. Von Os. How do you take these birds at the ornithotrophes? Dov. Easily, by a trap cage: and having taken one, the rest are all your own. They must, however, be marked with great delicacy and caution: for if tawdrily, or too conspicuously, their own friends will fall upon, pummel, and sometimes kill them. When an idle and playful schoolboy at Shrewsbury, under my ever-honoured Master, the learned and munificent Dr. Butler, I put the good people of that town into a day's uproar, by marking a bird. Von Os. The Dickens!!! Dov. Having taken, in a fall-trap of four bricks, one of those most radically plebeian of all birds, a dirty town sparrow, I dexterously with a bit of cobbler's wax fastened to his head a fine erect crest of very bright scarlet feathers; having previously subjected him to the ordeal of the ink-pot. He soon acquired numerous pursuers, and as many outlandish names; and before nightfall, three, four, and five guineas were offered. He was at length brought down by the celebrated Sam Hayward, the notorious poacher: and the universal and instantaneous opinion arose that it was a marlock of young DERIWAG for such was my scholastic cognomen, from a cunning knack at waggish derivations. Von Os. So, you had a character there, then? Dov. Yes, and have still, which I will endeavour to deserve and retain to the last hour of my life. Von Os. In one of the lectures delivered to that town in Freemason's Hall, I am told you very much amused your audience, by an account of some experiments on swallows. Dov. I hope, I did. Many years ago, a garret window in my house was accidentally left open, and a pair of rustic swallows built their fretted nest among the rafters, at which I was much pleased: and when they had hatched and reared their young, both they, and their parents, finding they were favourites, continued to play about the room all summer; and always roosted in it at night. Before they departed, a thought struck me to play them an innocent trick. One night I shut the window-sash, and took them all in an angler's landing. net, and fastened round their necks, without hurting them in the least, rings made of the very fine wire that laps the lower strings of a violoncello. At this they took no offence, but played about till their departure. At their appointed period they vanished, with their friends. The following spring the window was carefully set open for their admission; and they came accordingly, after "the daffodils had taken the winds of March with beauty;" and, to my great delight, four had the rings. One pair re-occupied the old nest, and another pair, or more, built in the room. Emboldened by their kindness and constancy, having a pretty little Greek story, you well know, in my mind, I ventured, in addition to the light wire, to affix on the neck of one, a thin round smooth piece of copper, on which I engraved, in Latin (being the tongue most universally known), Quò abis à Salopiá? [Whither away from Shropshire?] But whether he perished, or whether he met with his friend the gentle Athenian, I wot not: for, alas! he returned unto me no more. Von Os. This, then, establishes your opinion, that migratory birds, or their progeny, or both, do return, year after year, to the very same places. Dov. Yes; unless I was played a trick. Von Os. Perhaps the extraordinary success of the circumstance induces you to suspect a trick? Dov. Partly so: and partly that for many years, and at that time, a young gentleman resided at our then worthy old rector's, his guardian, an orphan boy, who had an incessant, and I may say rabid, propensity to playing practical tricks upon all sorts of people; but most particularly on whom he called philosophers, and the fair sex. He assisted me to fix the wires upon the birds, and might have fixed wires on others at their return. Von Os. I know whom you mean: he was inexhaustible in tricks ridiculously wanton, and ingeniously malignaut. Dov. From which it was impossible to reclaim him by the kindest admonitions and severest punishments. Von Os. I was at school with him; and one of his tricks there, was to watch the algebraical students from their studies, |