THE RUFFED GROUSE, 89
THE RUFFED GROUSE.
The Ruffed Grouse is a well known English bird; in this country it is usually called the Pheasant: in size, it is about midway between that bird and the Partridge; its plumage is a beautiful variety of brown and black; the end of the tail is barred with black on an ash colour; the bill is of a brownish horn colour; the legs are covered with fine white feathers: the toes are pectinated, and joined at their bottoms by membranes. Mr. John Bartram has given the following curious account of the Ruffed Heath bird: “This is a fine bird when his gaiety is displayed; that is, when he spreads his tail like a Turkey, and erects a circle of feathers round his neck like a ruff, walking very stately, with an even pace, and making a noise something like a Turkey; at which time the hunter must fire immediately at him, or he flies away directly two or three hundred yards, before he settles on the ground. There is something very remarkable in what we call their thumping; which they do with their wings, by clapping them against their sides, as the hunters say. They stand upon an old fallen tree, that has lain many years on the ground, where they begin their strokes gradually, at about two seconds of time distant from one another, and repeat them quicker and quicker, until they make a noise like thunder at a distance; which continues, from the begin. ning, about a minute, then ceaseth for about six or eight minutes before it begins again. The sound is heard near half a mile, by which means they are discovered by the hunters. "
THE TAME SWAN.
THE Wild Swan is endowed with a fine form, to which it is enabled to impart the most graceful motion, and possesses plumage of the finest white imaginable. Wild swans inhabit the northern parts of the world, but migrate southward when the weather threatens to become unusually severe. They are also said to assemble, in immense multitudes, on the lakes, at the setting in of the frosty season, and, by constant motion, and continually beating the water with their wings, prevent such parts as they prefer, or which abound with food, from freezing. The food of the Wild Swan consists of seeds and roots of plants, insects, and fish. The female builds a nest of water weeds, and usually lays six or eight white eggs. Our reader has, doubtless, heard of the supposed musical voice of the dying Swan: an error which was so generally adopted by the ancients, that a Swan became symbolical of poetry. The truth is, that the Wild Swan emits only a harsh and unpleasing sound: and the voice of the Tame Swan is altogether destitute of power or sweetness.
The Tame Swan is larger, and of a stouter form than the wild species: it has a reddish, or orange coloured beak, with a Jarge black knob on the base of the upper mandible; the Wild Swan's beak is black, and its cere yellow. But the greatest distinction is in the internal organization: the windpipe of the Tame Swan is simple in its form: that of the Wild Swan enters into a cavity prepared for its reception in the breast bone, and is doubled therein, before it enters the lungs this, it is said, enables the bird to utter its singular, harsh, and powerful note. The plumage of the Tame Swan, in whiteness, is equal to that of the wild species. Its food consists of fish and water plants. The female makes her nest in the weeds of some islet, or the bank of the water on which she is kept: she lays from six to eight white eggs; and the young, which are called cygnets, are hatched in six weeks, or ( as some writers say ) two months. The cygnets are of a fine brown colour, and do not obtain their perfect plumage for the first year of their lives.
IMMENSITY OF THE UNIVERSE.
BARON ZACH, an eminent astronomer, computes that there may be a thousand millions of stars in the heavens.( Art. Astronomy, Encyclop. Brit. ) If we suppose each star to be a sun, and attended by ten planets ( leaving comets out of the calculation, ) we have ten thousand millions of globes like the earth, within what are considered the bounds of the known universe. As there are suns to give light throughout all these systems, we may infer that there are also eyes to behold it, and beings, whose nature in this one important particular, is analogous to our own. To form an idea of the infinitely small proportion which our earth bears to this vast aggregate of systems, let us suppose 5,000 blades of grass to grow upon a square yard, from which we find, by calculation, that a meadow one mile long, by two thirds of a mile in breadth, will contain 10,000 millions of blades of grass. Let us then imagine such a meadow stretches out to the length of a mile before us, and the proportion which a single blade of grass bears to the whole herbage on its surface will express the relation which our earth bears to the known universe! But even this is exclusive, probably, of millions of suns “bosomed “in the unknown depths of space, and placed for ever beyond our ken, or the light of which may not have had time to travel down to us since the period of their creation.
M
OLD MAIDS.
I LOVE an old maid; I do not speak of an individual, but of the species I use the singular number, as speaking of a singularity in humanity. An old maid is not merely an antiquarian, she is an antiquity; not merely a record of the past, but the very past itself; she has escaped a great change, and sympathises not in the ordinary mutations of mortality. She inhabits a little eternity of her own. She is Miss from the beginning of the chapter to the end. I do not like to hear her called Mistress, as is sometimes the practice, for that looks and sounds like the resignation of despair, a voluntary extinction of hope. I do not know whether marriages are made in heaven; some people say they are, but I am almost sure that old maids are. There is a something about them which is not of the earth, earthly. They are spectators of the world, not adventurers nor ramblers; perhaps guardianswe say nothing of tatlers. They are evidently predestinated to be what they are. They owe not the singularity of their condition to any lack of beauty, wisdom, wit, or good temper; there is no accounting for it but on the principle of fatality. I have known many old maids, and of them all, not one that has not possessed as many good and amiable qualities as ninety and nine out of a hundred of my married acquaintance. Why then are they single? Heaven only knows. It is their fate! -Englishman's Magazine.
