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mert, hoping great things of it; some of which I daresay would. have come to pass, had not his majesty fallen into error by hastily dissolving it. Then came the Bishops' affair from Scotland, and in November, as you know, his majesty was constrained to re-assemble Parliament, having cast off a mild restraint only to find himself ridden with the hot curb of independency. This too he soon cast off and broke loose with a plunge, and then, as I have heard my lord Falkland say, "the Parliament began to quarrel, not about preserving the constitution, but about the manner of destroying it." After this he became very hopeless and distract, seeing no remedy or none that either side would look at, and knowing now that he must give up his ground and retire one way or other, having only the poor choice before him that Dr. Chillingworth had spoken of, either with the pharisees or with the sinners. Concluding after much torture of mind which well-nigh killed him, that the best hope for England lay in beating down the pharisees, he took his side with a foreboding sadness, for better or worse, with his majesty's men, that Nemesis still dogging his heels as it had done ever from the time he was first summoned. It would have torn your heart to see how he went forward after this, how suffering, yet how brave, like one smitten with a mortal disease, night shrouding him in deeper and deeper and that Nemesis standing by, he only abiding its time; yet brave, brave always, though he had looked into the baleful eyes of that Presence, too little thinking of himself, too little sparing of himself, good, gallant Falkland.

On the morning of the engagement he seemed to know the end was near at hand. I was with him. He dressed himself, as I thought, with greater scrupulosity than he had long manifested about his person. He was very calm, and a glimmer of his old sweetness came back to him as he spoke. Had I not been blind, I might have seen that he was going out to meet death.

"I am a weary of the times, coz this will not be the end, never think it: I can foresee much misery yet to come, but I believe I shall be out of it ere night," and so he took an affectionate leave of me. He did not return, and next morning we found him lying among the dead. We have given him a quiet burial where he is not like to be disturbed any more. He has found that peace he..

JOHN G. DOW.

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CONCERNING EYES.

HITE, crimson, emerald green, shining golden yellow, are amongst the colours seen in the eyes of birds. In owls, herons, cormorants, and many other tribes, the brightly-tinted eye is incomparably the finest feature and chief glory. It fixes the attention at once, appearing like a splendid gem, for which the airy bird-body with its graceful curves and soft tints forms an appropriate setting. When the eye closes in death, the bird, except to the naturalist, becomes a mere bundle of dead feathers: crystal globes may be put into the empty sockets, and a bold life-imitating attitude given to the stuffed specimen; but the vitreous orbs shoot forth no life-like flames, the "passion and the fire whose fountains are within" have vanished, and the best work of the taxidermist, who has given a life to his bastard art, produces in the mind only sensations of irritation and disgust. In museums, where limited space stands in the way of any abortive attempts at copying nature too closely, the stuffer's work is endurable because useful; but in a drawing-room, who does not close his eyes or turn aside to avoid seeing a case of stuffed birds -those unlovely mementoes of death in their gay plumes? who does not shudder, albeit not with fear, to see the wild cat, filled with straw, yawning horribly, and trying to frighten the spectator with its crockery glare? I shall never forget the first sight I had of the late Mr. Gould's collection of humming-birds (now in the National Museum), shown to me by the naturalist himself, who evidently took considerable pride in the work of his hands. I had just left tropical nature behind me across the Atlantic, and the unexpected meeting with a transcript of it in a dusty room in Bedford Square gave me quite a shock. Those pellets of dead feathers, which had long ceased to sparkle and shine, stuck with wires-not invisible-over blossoming cloth and tinsel bushes, how melancholy they made me feel!

Considering the bright colour and great splendour of some eyes, particularly in birds, it seems probable that in these cases the organ has a twofold use : first and chiefly, to see; secondly, to intimidate an adversary with those luminous mirrors, in which all the dangerous. fury of a creature brought to bay is best depicted. Throughout nature

the dark eye predominates; and there is certainly a great depth of fierceness in the dark eye of a bird of prey; but its effect is less than that produced by the vividly-coloured eye, or even of the white eye of some raptorial species, as, for instance, of the Asturina pucherani. Violent emotions are associated in our minds-possibly, also, in the minds of other species-with certain colours. Bright red seems the appropriate hue of anger: the poet Herbert even calls the rose "angrie and brave" on account of its hue and the red or orange certainly expresses resentment better than the dark eye. Even a very slight spontaneous variation in the colouring of the irides might give an advantage to an individual for natural selection to act on; for we can see in almost any living creature that not only in its perpetual metaphorical struggle for existence is its life safeguarded in many ways; but when protective resemblances, flight, and instincts of concealment all fail, and it is compelled to engage in a real struggle with a living adversary, it is provided for such occasions with another set of defences. Language and attitudes of defiance come into play; feathers or hairs are erected; beaks snap and strike, or teeth are gnashed, and the mouth foams or spits; the body puffs out; wings are waved or feet stamped on the ground, and many other gestures of rage are practised. It is not possible to believe that the colouring of the crystal globes, towards which an opponent's sight is first directed, and which most vividly exhibit the raging emotions within, can have been entirely neglected as a means of defence by the principle of selection in nature. For all these reasons I believe the bright-coloured eye is an improvement on the dark eye.

Man has been very little improved in this direction, the dark eye, except in the north of Europe, having been, until recent times, almost or quite universal. The blue eye does not seem to have any advantage for man in a state of nature, being mild where fierceness of expression is required; it is almost unknown amongst the inferior creatures; and only on the supposition that the appearance of the eye is less important to man's welfare than it is to that of other species can we account for its survival in a branch of the human race. Little, however, as the human eye has changed, assuming it to have been dark originally, there is a great deal of spontaneous variation in individuals, light hazel and blue-grey being apparently the most variable. I have found curiously marked and spotted eyes not unin some instances the spots being so black, round, and large as to produce the appearance of eyes with clusters of pupils on them. I have known one person with large brown spots on light blue-grey eyes, whose children all inherited the peculiarity; also

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and the farm and disposition of the markings * JL 12 ven predsen Iat the eves of a common species of But we look in vain amongst men for the splende men faming yellow, or starting white orbs 1ove made the dark-skinned brave inspired by violent emohou z beng temibie to see Nature has neglected man in this respect and is remedy the omission that he stains his face with Brightments and crowns his head with engies' barred plumes.

Brig decoloured ens marr species are probably due, like ornaments and mudr plumage sexual selection. The quality of stating in the dark, however, possessed by many nocturnal and semi-nocturnal species has always, I believe, a hostile purpose. When found in inoffense species, as, for instance, in the lemurs, it can only be attributed to mimicry, and this would be a parallel case with butterses mimicking the bellllant warning colours" of other species on which birds do not prey. Cats amongst mammals, and owls amongst birds, Lave been most Hy favoured; but to the owls the palm must be given. The feline eyes, as of a puma or wild cat, blazing with wrath, are wonderful to see; sometimes the sight of them affects one like an electric shock; but for intense brilliance and quick changes, the dark orbs kindling with the startling suddenness of a cloud illuninated by flashes of lightning, the yellow globes of the owl are unparalleled. Some readers might think my language exaggerated. Descriptions of bright sunsets and of storms with thunder and lightning would, no doubt, sound extravagant to one who had never witnessed these phenomena. Those only who spend years "conversing with wild animals in desert places," to quote Azara's words, know that, as with the atmosphere, so with animal life, there are special moments; and that a creature presenting a very sorry appearance dead in a museum, or living in captivity, may, when hard pressed and fighting for life in its own fastness, be sublimed by its fury into a weird and terrible object.

Nature has many surprises for those who wait on her one of the greatest she ever favoured me with was the sight of a wounded Magellanic eagle-owl I shot on the Rio Negro in Patagonia. The haunt of this bird was an island in the river, overgrown with giant grasses and tall willows, leafless now, for it was in the middle of winter. Here I sought for and found him waiting on his perch for

the sun to set. He eyed me so calmly when I aimed my gun, I scarcely had the heart to pull the trigger. He had reigned there so long, the feudal tyrant of that remote wilderness! Many a water-rat, stealing like a shadow along the margin between the deep stream and the giant rushes, he had snatched away to death; many a spotted wild pigeon had woke on its perch at night with his cruel crooked talons piercing its flesh; and beyond the valley on the bushy uplands many a crested tinamou had been slain on her nest and her beautiful glossy dark green eggs left to grow pale in the sun and wind, the little lives that were in them dead because of their mother's death. But I wanted that bird badly, and hardened my heart: the "demoniacal laughter" with which he had so often answered the rushing sound of the swift black river at eventide would be heard no more. I fired he swerved on his perch, remained suspended for a few moments, then slowly fluttered down. Behind the spot where he had fallen was a great mass of tangled dark-green grass, out of which rose the tall, slender boles of the trees; overhead through the fretwork of leafless twigs the sky was flushed with tender roseate tints, for the sun had now gone down and the surface of the earth was in shadow. There, in such a scene, and with the wintry quiet of the desert over it all, I found my victim stung by his wounds to fury and prepared for the last supreme effort. Even in repose he is a big eagle-like bird now his appearance was quite altered, and in the dim, uncertain light he looked gigantic in size-a monster of strange form and terrible aspect. Each particular feather stood out on end, the tawny barred tail spread out like a fan, the immense tiger-coloured wings wide open and rigid, so that as the bird, that had clutched the grass with his great feathered claws, swayed his body slowly from side to side-just as a snake about to strike sways its head, or as an angry watchful cat moves its tail-first the tip of one, then of the other wing touched the ground. The black horns stood erect, while in the centre of the wheel-shaped head the beak snapped incessantly, producing a sound resembling the clicking of a sewing-machine. This was a suitable setting for the pair of magnificent furious eyes, on which I gazed with a kind of fascination, not unmixed with fear when I remembered the agony of pain suffered on former occasions from sharp, crooked talons driven into me to the bone. The irides were of a bright orange colour, but every time I attempted to approach the bird they kindled into great globes of quivering yellow flame, the black pupils being surrounded by a scintillating crimson light which threw out minute yellow sparks into the air. When I retired from the bird this preternatural fiery aspect would instantly vanish.

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