70.- COLORS OF BIRDS. am'e-thyst, a precious stone. chæ'to-don, a genus of fishes. cor'y-phene, the dolphin (fish). har-mo'ni-ous, symmetrical. par-a-di-si'a-cal, like paradise. 1. IN color, birds take precedence of all other living creatures. Our four-footed friends are clothed in neutral tints, whose effect in harmonious blending is indeed beautiful; but this is repose of color. Bound to the soil, the quadrupeds and the creeping things partake of the nature of the soil, earthy and dull. But the birds, those beings of the air, borrow the sunlight, levy upon the rainbow, and appropriate the flames of sunset clouds. 2. Even the minerals cannot surpass the birds in purity of color. Opal and diamond, amethyst and ruby, jasper and emerald, and the glory of every gem, are seen on the feathers of the birds, not dead, resting in mineral slumber, but radiant and sparkling with living fire. Some reptiles have pure and bright colors, but taken altogether they are rather of the somber and neutral hues. Serpents there are with bright colors laid on gaudily; but even these very colors, bright though they be, remind one only the more glaringly of detested venom. 3. Immensely varied and brilliant are the hues to be found on fishes. Perhaps the chaetodons surpass all others. Their home is in the tropical seas. Gorgeous, indeed, are their garments, striking and wonderful; and yet birds without number can be found whose attire is far richer, not only in single colors, but in union of harmonious tints. In the West Indies is a fish called the angel-fish. It has blue and golden stripes and bands of such purity and beauty as to make one think it the most wonderful and beautiful thing in all the world. 4. We have heard much of the beautiful colors of the dolphin, or, more correctly speaking, of the coryphene, and especially of its changing hues while in the act of dying. Coming from the West Indies in a sailing vessel, I had opportunity of seeing two of these fishes, which were hooked and hauled aboard one day. Active swimmers they were indeed; but with their beauty of color I was not so much impressed. Their hues seemed metallic; and the whole fish had a brassy look not altogether pleasing. Far more beautifully colored creatures than the dolphin swim the sea. 5. In color, nothing approaches the birds so nearly as insects; and they, too, are winged. Approaching the birds in color, they also approach them in power of flight; and thus in display of color the navigators of the air stand foremost of all creatures of the earth. And yet even insects do not really approach the birds in point of beauty. Far behind them in elegance of form, their colors, even if as fine, do not find such happy expression. The lustrous beetle, however beautiful may be his wing-covers inside or outside of the microscope, cannot vie in display of color with a bird of handsome plumage. The gayest butterfly that ever sipped nectar from a flower pales in comparison with one of our little humming-birds, decked in colors so bright and pure that they seem snatched from the rainbow itself. 6. The trogons are all beautiful birds; and pre-eminently so is the resplendent trogon that lives in the shady forests of Mexico. No mineral, no insect, no fish, no reptile, nay, scarcely the rainbow itself, can show such green as glows in the long bending feathers of his tail. For gracefulness of form, exquisite blending of the purest hues, transcendently lovely, we should look upon this paradisiacal bird. 7. But can we venture to say that any bird rivals the peacock in splendor of plumage? The trogon's beauty and the peacock's do not clash: each is perfection, each is glorious. Search the animal kingdom; bring together all the mammals-lions, tigers, leopards, monkeys; put together all their stripes and spots and streaks, and you cannot bring out a color that shall equal a single feather of a peacock's tail. Then assemble all the fishes-red, yellow, blue; and all the butterflies, beetles, and every shining bug; and leave not out the frogs, snakes, or lizards, nor any of the speckled spiders, nor the sea-fans, nor the corals, nor the sea-weeds, nor any other kind of weed, plant, or tree; and bring all the flowers of the world together, and you can find nothing of such splendor as a peacock's tail. 8. Birds of flight! birds of plumage! birds of song!who but you can hold the circled rainbow in his crest? On the humming-bird flames the sunlight; on his breast the rainbow dwells. GUSTAVUS FRANKENSTEIN. 71. — ALEXANDER WILSON, THE LOVER OF apt'i-tüde, fitness, tendency. con'fines, boundaries. cul'ti-vat-ed, paid attention to. es'pi-on-age, close observation. BIRDS. or-ni-thol'o-gist, a student of birds. 1. TEN years before the Declaration of Independence, there was born to a poor weaver in the little town of Pais ley, Scotland, a son in whose heart all the birds nestled and sang. This was Alexander Wilson, the illustrious ornithologist, who won undying fame by first making known to the world of science the feathered denizens of our American forests. 2. After receiving a little education at the school in his native town, young Wilson was apprenticed to his brotherin-law to learn the trade of a weaver. As apprentice and journeyman he continued for several years at the loom, meantime in the evening weaving the finer fabric of verse. But it was neither as a weaver nor as a poet that he was to pass his life, and his true career was opened to him soon after he emigrated to this country in 1794, at the age of twenty-eight. 3. Wilson settled himself as a school teacher near Philadelphia. The school-house was pleasantly situated near the botanical garden of William Bartram, and to this circumstance, more than any other, may be traced the aftercareer of Wilson. Bartram was a man unusually versed in natural history, and knew more about birds than any other man in the state. From the day of his arrival in America, Wilson had been struck with the beauty of the birds he saw, and now that he had an opportunity of conversing with a man who knew so much of their habits, the subject of ornithology became one of great interest to him. In a short time he devoted himself to it with an enthusiasm which denoted a natural aptitude for the study. 4. Before embracing ornithology as a specialty, he made natural history, in all its beautiful comprehensiveness, a study. His little apartment was crowded with specimens of the familiar animals, birds, and reptiles of the neighborhood; and all the boys of the country for miles round. knew that they were certain of a few coppers if they could secure some scarce specimen of the animal creation. His own scholars, aware of his passion, rendered good service in the cause. Their eagerness in this respect is illustrated in the following beautiful little incident, described in the most beautiful way by Wilson himself. 5. "One of my boys caught a mouse in school a few days ago, and directly marched up to me with his prisoner. I set about drawing it the same evening, and all the while the pantings of its little heart showed that it was in the most extreme agonies of fear. I had intended to kill it, in order to fix it in the claws of a stuffed owl; but, happening to spill a few drops of water where it was tied, it lapped it up with such eagerness, and looked up in my face with |