descending climber to save himself from being hit by fragments of the rock, which are broken off by the rope coming in contact with them. He avoids the danger by moving sideways when the stone is falling, and by taking care, as he goes down, to clear away with his foot any portion of the rock that seems ready to give way. One of the climbers, while be was imparting to me instructions how to act, grinned purposely, and showed his upper jaw. I learned by his story, that, last year, a falling stone had driven two of his front teeth down his throat; while the poor climber, with all his dexterity, was unable to fend off the blow.

"As I was lowered down, the grandeur and sublimity of the scene beggared all description, and amply repaid any little unpleasant sensations which arose on the score of danger. The sea was roaring at the base of this stupendous wall of rocks; thousands and tens of thousands of wildfowl were in an instant on the wing: the kittiwakes and jackdaws rose in circling flight; while most of the guillemots, razorbills, and puffins, left the ledges of the rocks, in a straight and downward line, with a peculiarly quick motion of the pinions, till they plunged into the ocean. It was easy to distinguish the puffins from the razorbills in their descent: these presented a back of a uniformly dark colour; those had a faint white diagonal line running across the wings. The nests of the kittiwakes were close to each other, on every part of the rocks which was capable of holding them; and they were so numerous, as totally to defy any attempt to count them. On the bare and level ledge of the rocks, often not more than six inches wide, lay the eggs of the guillemots: some were placed parallel with the range of the shelf, others nearly so, and others with their blunt and sharp ends indiscriminately pointing to the sea. By no glutinous matter, nor any foreign body what eve were they affixed to the rock: bare they lay, unattached, as on the palm of your outstretched hand. You might see nine or ten, or sometimes twelve, old guillemots in a line, so near to each other that their wings seemed to touch those of their neighbours; and when they flew off at your approach, you would see as many eggs as you had counted birds sitting on the ledge.

66 The eggs vary in size and shape and colour beyond all belief. Some are large, others small; some exceedingly sharp at one end, and others nearly rotund. Where one is green, streaked and blotched with black, another has a milk-white ground, blotched and streaked with light brown. Others, again, present a very pale green colour, without any markings at all; while others are of a somewhat darker green, with streaks and blotches of a remarkably faded brown. In a word, Nature seems to have introduced such an endless intermixture of white, brown, green, yellow, and black, into the shells of the eggs of the guillemots, that it absolutely requires the aid of the well-set pallet of a painter to give an adequate idea of their beautifully blended variety of colouring. The pen has no chance of success in attempting the description.

VOL. VII.-NO. XIII.

"The rock-climbers assure you that the guillemot, when undisturbed, never lays more than one egg; but that, if it be taken away, she will lay another; and, if she be plundered of that, she will then produce a third; and so on. If you dissect a guillemot, you will find a knot of eggs within her. The rock-climbers affirm that the bird can retain these eggs, or produce them, according to circumstances. Thus, if she be allowed to hatch her first egg, she lays no more for the season; if that egg be lost or taken away, another is laid to supply its place.

"The men also assure you that, when the young guillemot gets to a certain size, it manages to climb upon the back of the old bird, which conveys it down to the ocean. Having carried a good telescope with me, through it I saw numbers of young guillemots, diving and sporting on the sea, quite unable to fly; and I observed others on the ledges of the rocks, as I went down among them, in such situations, that, had they attempted to fall into the waves beneath, they would have been killed by striking against the projecting points of the intervening sharp and rugged rocks: wherefore I concluded that the information of the rock-climbers was to be depended upon; and I more easily gave credit to it, because I myself have seen an old swan sailing on the water, with her young ones upon her back, about a week after they were hatched.

"He who rejoices when he sees all nature smiling around him, and who takes an interest in contemplating the birds of heaven as they wing their way before him, will feel sad at heart on learning the unmerited persecution to which these harmless seafowl are exposed. Parties of sportsmen, from all quarters of the kingdom, visit Flamborough and its vicinity during the summer months, and spread sad devastation all around them. No profit attends the carnage; the poor unfortunate birds serve merely as marks to aim at, and they are generally left where they fall. Did these heartless gunmen reflect, but for one moment, how many innocent birds their shot destroys; how many fall disabled on the wave, there to linger for hours, perhaps for days, in torture and in anguish; did they but consider how many helpless young ones will never see again their parents coming to the rock with food; they would, methinks, adopt some other plan to try their skill, or cheat the lingering hour.

"The old fable tells us that the cormorant was once a woolmerchant. He entered into partnership with the bramble and the bat, and they freighted a large vessel with wool. She struck on some rocks, and went to the bottom. Since that disaster, the bat sculks in his hiding-hole until twilight, in order that he may avoid his creditors: the bramble seizes hold of every passing sheep, to make up his loss by retaining part of its wool; while the cormorant is for ever diving into waters of the deep, in hopes of discovering whereabout his foundered vessel lies. So far for the fable, which will always bring pleasing recollections into the minds of those who are fond of rural pursuits.

"The cormorants often pay me a visit in the winter season; and, could they but perceive that there is safety for them here, and great danger elsewhere, they would remain with me while the water is unfrozen. But they wander, unfortunately, through parts where protection is not afforded them; and, being outlandish birds in the eyes of the neighbouring gamekeepers, they are immediately shot at. Those which find their way here are so unconscious of danger, that, after they have spent a considerable portion of time in diving for fish, they will come and preen their feathers on the terrace which rises from the water, within ten yards of the drawing-room windows. "The cormorant may be justly styled the feathered terror of the finny tribe. His skill in diving is most admirable, and his success beyond belief. You may know him at a distance, among a thousand waterfowl, by his upright neck, by his body being apparently half immersed in the water, and by his being perpetually in motion when not on land. While the ducks and teal and wigeons are stationary on the pool, the cormorant is seen swimming to and fro, as if in quest of something.' First raising his body nearly perpendicular, down he plunges into the deep; and, after staying there a considerable time, he is sure to bring up a fish, which he invariably swallows head foremost. Sometimes half an hour elapses before he can manage to accommodate a large eel quietly in his stomach. You see him straining violently, with repeated efforts to gulp it; and when you fancy that the slippery mouthful is disposed of, all on a sudden the eel retrogrades upwards from its dismal sepulchre, struggling violently to escape. The cormorant swallows it again; and up again it comes, and shows its tail a foot or more out of his destroyer's mouth. At length, worn out with ineffectual writhings and slidings, the eel is gulped down into the cormorant's stomach for the last time, there to meet its dreaded and inevitable fate. This gormandising exhibition was witnessed here by several individuals, both ladies and gentlemen, on Nov. 26, 1832, through an excellent eight and twenty guinea telescope; the cormorant being, at that time, not more than a hundred yards distant from the observers. I was of the party.

"When I visited Flamborough Head, in the first week in June, I was disappointed in not seeing the cormorant there: but I was informed, in Bridlington Quay, that this bird was not to be found nearer than the rocks at Buckton; and that it had eggs very late in the season. In consequence of this information, I made a second expedition to the sea coast, and arrived at Bridlington Quay on July 14, 1834.

"About three quarters of a mile from the sea, betwixt Flamborough Head and Filey Bay, stands the once hospitable mansion of Buckton Hall. I say hospitable, because its carved ornaments in stone, its stately appearance, and the excellent manner in which its outbuildings have been constructed, plainly indicate that mirth and revelry must once have cheered its walls. But the tide of prosperity

has ceased to flow. Something or other seems to have intervened, and turned it down another channel: for now the once well-known Buckton Hall is a neglected mansion; and the stranger, as he passes near it, sees at one glance that it is no longer a place of rendezvous for the great. The present tenant kindly allowed the horse and gig, which I had hired in Bridlington Quay, to be put under cover till I returned from the cliff.

"My guide, whose name was Mellor, and who possesses a very accurate knowledge of all the birds in this district, having mustered men and ropes in the village of Buckton, we proceeded across the table land to the Raincliff, which forms a perpendicular wall to the ocean, 140 yards high. Whilst I was descending this precipice, thousands of guillemots and razorbills enlivened the interesting scene. Some were going down to the water, others were ascending from it; while every ledge of the rock, as far as my eye could reach, was literally covered with birds of the same species. The cormorants stayed not to witness my unwelcome descent into their ancient and almost inaccessible settlement. They all took wing, as soon as we reached the edge of the cliff, and went far away to sea. It was a difficult matter to procure their eggs; for the nests were built in places where the rocks overhung them; and it was only by my giving the rope a swinging motion, and then taking advantage of it, as it brought me to the face of the cliff, that I was enabled to get a footing on the ledges which contained them. These nests were composed of thick sticks, plants from the rocks, grass, ketlocks which had gone te seed, and a little wool. There were four young birds in one, three eggs in another, two in a third, and one newly laid in a fourth. The shell of the cormorant's eggs is incrusted with a white chalky substance, which is easily scraped off with your penknife, and then you get at the true colour of the shell; the outside of which is of a whitish green, and the inside of a green extremely delicate and beautiful. The egg is oblong in shape, and you find it small for the size of the bird. The four young cormorants were unfledged, and covered with a black down. Their long necks, and long wing-bones, gave them a grotesque, and an almost hideous appearance. They would have been of service to the renowned Callot, when he was making his celebrated sketch of the temptations of St. Anthony. There came from the nests a fetid smell, so intolerable, that you might have fancied you had got among Virgil's Harpies; or that you were inhaling exhalations from the den of Cacus. Nothing could have been more distressing to your nasal sensibilities.

"It is remarkable that on the Raincliff not a kittiwake is seen to alight; and scarcely ever observed to fly close past it. I saw no signs that this bird had ever made its nest here. An attentive naturalist, who would take up his quarters in this neighbourhood, and visit the coast every day during the breeding season, might possibly be able to discover the cause why the kittiwake, which is seen in such countless thousands from Flamborough Head to Bempton,

should shun the Raincliff, which, apparently differs in nothing but height from the other parts of this bold and rocky shore.

"I am positive that we have not two species of cormorant in Great Britain. The crested cormorant, with a white spot on each thigh, is merely the common cormorant in his nuptial dress, This is not the only bird which becomes highly ornamented during the breeding season. On some future day, when the storms of winter forbid all access to the fields, and condemn me to the dull monotony of life within doors, I may possibly take up the pen, and write down a few remarks upon the change of plumage in birds."

ART. VIII. 1. Lectures on the Real Presence of the body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ in the Blessed Eucharist. Delivered in the English College, Rome. By Nicholas Wiseman, D.D. Vol. 1. Scriptural Proofs. London, 1836. 2. The Roman Catholic Doctrine of the Eucharist considered, in reply to Dr. Wiseman's argument from Scripture. By Thomas Turton, D.D., Regius Professor of Divinity in the University of Cambride, and Dean of Peterborough. Cambridge, 1887.

3. A Reply to the Rev. Dr. Turton's "Roman Catholic Doctrine of the Eucharist considered," Philalethes Cantabrigiensis, the British Critic, and the Church of England Quarterly Review. By Nicholas Wiseman, D.D. London,

1839.

ELIGIOUS controversy, more than any other, imposes the observance of honesty and decorum on those who engage in it. If it be too much to expect that the disputants should never allow their passions to interfere in the conflict, it may, however, be reasonably required that they should control them, and spare TRUTH, whose interests are professedly espoused, the dishonour of being involved in a fray of personalities. The petty arts of wrangling should be disdained. Invectives, cowardly insinuations, perversions of meaning, and the like appliances of a worthless cause, or a worthless advocate, should be relinquished to the professed libeller, or the hireling scribe of a political faction. They are alike unmanly and unchristian.

Of all religious subjects, the Eucharist is that, which seems most to inculcate moderate and charitable language in the treatment, and to interdict asperity and railing from discussions even incidentally connected with it. An institution,