boys to carry naked and half-fledged young birds to the Zoological Gardens on Whit-Monday to throw among the eagles and hawks. If we really wish to protect our wild birds why not include all in the list, and also prohibit the wanton destruction of their eggs and young? The present Act may be a check on some of the birdcatchers, but I fear that many will disregard it altogether; for on seeing some of these men at their avocation a week or two since, I asked if they were aware that it was against the law to catch birds after the 15th of March. The answer was, "Yes, sir, we know, but perhaps we are not catching birds that are protected,"―at the same time feeling determined that every bird should be "good" and unprotected which came into their nets. Now had the words "all wild birds" been mentioned in the Act, there could not possibly be any excuse for them. Then, again, how many people will plead ignorance of even the names of one half of the species mentioned in the list?

April 1. Lesser blackbacked gulls very numerous in our harbour. Observed a pair of razorbills, still in winter or immature plumage, croaking loudly to each other in the Sound.

April 3. Saw and heard several chiffchaffs at Mount Edgecombe.

April 4. Visited the neighbourhood of St. Clear, in Cornwall. When crossing the river Tamar at St. Germans, on my way down, noticed a large number of lesser blackbacked and herring gulls on the mud-banks and flocks of ring doves on the salt-marshes; many green woodpeckers a few miles from Liskeard, which species, I am glad to add, has become far more plentiful throughout Cornwall during the last few years; I also found kestrels and wood larks numerous; remarked several flocks of fieldfares, lapwings and curlews on the moors; and by the trout-streams many pairs of gray wagtails. Visited the neighbourhood of Launceston, and in the Valley of the Tamar observed several swallows on the wing, three common sandpipers on a small rock in the river, many dippers, and a kingfisher, which latter was constantly flying down the stream with a small fish in its beak, no doubt having a nest and young not far off; and on the river's bank I saw the remains of a waterhen, which had been killed by some bird of prey. In the woods were many green woodpeckers and nuthatches.

April 15. Heard some willow wrens and saw more swallows. Observed with a powerful pocket-telescope some starlings, among

SECOND SERIES-VOL. VIII.

2 G

which was a fine old bird that appeared to be altogether of a beautiful glossy black, without any spots even on the back. Saw a female redbreasted merganser, in the flesh, which had been killed a few days before in Whitsand Bay, Cornwall: it was in strong moult.

April 17. Heard the cuckoo in Bickleigh Vale, near Plymouth, and on the 18th the blackcap and tree pipit; wind north, but mild.

April 19. Wind N.E., mild and fine. More blackcaps and a whitethroat.

April 23. Examined a puffin which had been taken in an exhausted state on the coast: it was very emaciated and the stomach quite empty.

April 26. Wind N.E., very cold. Saw a flock of whimbrels flying up the river, apparently just arrived from sea. Had one given to me the same day, in the flesh, which flew on board a ship in the channel about a week before, and was kept alive for some days. I found this bird in a dreadfully emaciated

state.

April 30. There were about three hundred lesser blackbacked and herring gulls on the Laira mud-banks, and a great many also in the harbour; indeed I never knew the former species so plentiful as it is just now, and their constant cry when circling high in the air, even over the town, is remarked by everyone.

8, Lower Durnford Street, Stonehouse, Plymouth. May 7, 1873.

JOHN GATCOMBE.

Large Otter near Plymouth.-On the 8th of March I was much interested in watching a very large otter fishing in the sea, about a hundred and fifty yards from the rocks, diving about just as a cormorant would do, and bringing up a fish every minute, although the sea was rather rough. By and by a large northern diver ranged up alongside, and for a short time otter and diver seemed to be fishing in concert, but I must say that the otter appeared to catch four or five fish to the diver's one. This otter was the largest I ever saw, and I think it must have been the same described in my note in the Zoologist' for January (S. S. 3365).-John Gatcombe.

Zoology of the Royal Academy. By EDWARD Newman.

My brief remarks on the zoological pictures exhibited by the Royal Academy last year were received with so much kindness and consideration, that I have been induced again to try my hand at art criticism, eschewing, however, the peculiar phraseology of the learned few who may be called "professors of the science," and confining myself to the Johnsonian language I have been writing from youth to old age.

There are certainly this year a much larger proportion of zoological pictures of high merit than I recollect in any previous exhibition; and, whether it be a good or a bad sign I will not presume to pronounce, I think that animal painting has now taken the very highest position in English art. Acres of portraits, interesting only to the painters and the painted, are still present, but serve merely as a foil to those charming pictures which, with or without the animals, must delight every one who has a taste for country life. The self-imposed limit to my subject prevents my noticing the works of the great masters of landscape, Linnell, Vicat Cole and Birkett Foster, and I must confine myself to paintings of which animals constitute the chief subject and the chief ornament.

Mr. CARTER exhibits a very telling picture under the title of Maternal Felicity (No. 26); it represents a fallow deer and her fawn, drawn with unusual skill and exhibiting unusual knowledge: the animals are posed with taste and judgment, and painted with great care there is nothing really objectionable in the title, but it seems rather too sentimental.

By a perversity of genius by no means uncommon, Mr. HARDY gives us a picture of lions without a name, and Mr. POOLE gives the title, A Lion in the Path (No. 28), to a picture without a lion; it is a truly fine landscape, but I can find no excuse for the misnomer: if the queer cripple under the shade of the oaks be intended for a lion, I am unable to detect the likeness: not so Mr. Hardy's nameless picture; his conflicting brutes are most manifestly intended for lions, and monstrous ones too, standing on their hind legs, as one often sees dogs, but I think not lions, or any other members of the cat family. Mr. Hardy's idea seems to be borrowed from Mr. Ward's case at the Crystal Palace, called "The Struggle," in which the veritable skins of a lion and a tiger are represented

romping in this canine manner, to the intense delectation of all juvenile visitors. I think Mr. Hardy might with advantage have borrowed Mr. Ward's title as well as his idea. Two lions engaged in this manner for their own satisfaction would doubtless afford a terrible and grand spectacle. The only spectator Mr. Hardy has introduced is a lioness, who seems looking on with all the sangfroid of a fashionable lady at similar combats in a Roman amphi theatre.

Mr. FISHER has a large canvas covered with donkeys and geese, which he calls The Intrusion (No. 34). The donkeys exhibit the very essense of stolid indifference; the geese, on the other hand, are in a state of rabid and uncontrollable panic; what antecedents have conspired to induce this state of things does not appear; but the violence of the birds is well contrasted with the quietude of the beasts, and if that was the painter's object he has succeeded; but as the donkeys evidently stood for their portraits and the geese flew for theirs, it follows that the donkeys are the better painted. Mr. Fisher in his brief view of flying geese does not seem to have acquired a very correct idea of their appearance.

Mr. SIDNEY COOPER'S Monarch of the Meadows (No. 68) is an improvement of his familiar monotonous style. The monarch is a huge bull apparently standing on an invisible footstool behind a cow and calf which are lying down.

In Mr. G. D. LESLIE'S painting called The Fountain, I would invite attention to the magpie: few people know what a beautiful bird the magpie is; they consider it an objectionable, harsh, noisy, mischievous, black and white fellow, with a longish tail. Mr. Leslie has painted him in his true colours, and those colours are very handsome.

That very clever painter Mr. ORCHARDSON has two zoological pictures of considerable merit: one of them, intituled The Protector (No. 194), represents a large dog in company with a pleasantlooking lady in a garden; the lady seems to have no need of such a protector; but the dog is made to indicate the approach of a strange, if not unwelcome, footstep: the other picture, Oscar and Bain (No. 208), seems to be popular, but I failed to discover its attraction.

Sir EDWIN LANDSEER is again in dreamland, but his dreams are the dreams of genius: he has two paintings. Tracker (No. 255) and Sketch of Her Majesty the Queen (No. 256), proclaim the painter

in unmistakable accents; but there was no occasion for the explanations to the latter, "Unfinished," and "Her Majesty has not sat for the likeness;" it is no likeness at all: as for Tracker, a very crude sketch of a collie, I can only lament it should be left in so unfinished a condition. There is something extremely pleasing in the white palfrey on which the lady is sitting: grace and gentleness are happily combined.

I doubt whether Mr. Hook's Ornithology is so good as his painting; the former is borrowed, the latter his own. A boy is represented with a knife tied to the end of a stick, and holding up this curious instrument for a gull to transfix himself on, while a second boy is engaged taking the eggs of the gull from a very dangerous situation near the top of a cliff: a girl is holding the second boy by the legs to prevent his falling into the deep green sea, far, far beneath. The picture (No. 254) is called The Bonxie, and when I say it is exquisitely painted I am merely saying it is Mr. Hook's. Mr. Hook has selected from Bewick's Birds' the following passage to illustrate the scene:

"It is, however, well ascertained that they [the skua gulls] are uncommonly courageous in defence of their own young, and that they seize, with the utmost vengeance, upon any animal, whether man or beast, that offers to disturb their nests; and it is said also that they sometimes attack the shepherds even when they are watching their flocks upon the hills, who are obliged, in their own defence, to guard their heads, and to ward off the blows of the assailants by holding a pointed stick towards them, against which they sometimes dash with such force as to be killed on the spot. In like manner they who are about to rob their nests, hold a knife, or other sharp instrument, over their heads, upon which the enraged bird precipitates and transfixes itself."—Vol. ii. pp. 211 (1816).

Whether Bewick has sufficient authority for this passage may perhaps be doubted, but the plan or tradition, whichever it may be, of allowing birds to transfix themselves, is much older than the time of our illustrious wood-engraver. In a volume published at Rome in 1622, and intituled 'Olina (Giov. Pietro) Uccellaria, overo discorso della natura e proprieta de diversi Uccelli,' is an engraving (eight inches by six) of birds impaling themselves in this manner, and lettered thus:- "Del colombaccio e sua coccia." In the lefthand upper corner you see pigeons transfixing themselves until the spikes are filled, while others, with closed wings, are dropping down headlong, as though disappointed that there were no more