inserted too low, and too much at a right-
angle with the cranium. The sentiment of
fraternity is highly developed in most species
ot the Ploveridae. When a plover is brought
to the ground, the whole band alights, to
render him assistance. Sportsmen have more
than once exterminated whole flocks of dotterels
without stirring a step. The poor creatures
cruelly expiate their fault of having too
round a head. They have the extreme and
idiotic simplicity to believe in the harmlessness
of tipsy people; and allow themselves to
be easily approached by whomsoever may
pretend to be unable to walk straight. Religious
observers of the Mussulman law, they repair
to the water side at stated hours two or three
times every day, to make their ablutions and
wash their feet. The dotterel, of all the
plovers, has the biggest and the roundest head,
which might perhaps be supposed to indicate
that it contains the greatest quantity of
brain. The fact is exactly the reverse. He
has the greatest faith in drunken men, and
manifests the most obstinate propensity to
throw himself in the sportsman's way. This
same dotterel, formerly very common in La
Beauce, was the primitive element of the
famous pâté de Chartres. It has fallen a
victim to its own glory. The pâté's
success led to the pâté's consumption, and the
pâté's consumption led naturally to the
destruction of the species. The Chartres pastry-
cooks are at last obliged to replace the
absent dotterel by partridge, quail, and lark
flesh.

Threetoeism's last expression appears in
the form of the golden plover. Henceforth
this character of primitiveuess completely
disappears; its disappearance announces
the end of flatfootisrn, and our arrival at a
superior sphere. The bird by which the
transition is made, is the lapwing, rejoicing in a
small hind toe. The apteryx is an instance
what a superior passional title is conferred
upon a quasi-tridactyl by the simple addition
of a spur, however high on the leg it may
sprout. The influence of a fourth toe is not
less manifest here. The Swiss lapwing
contracts matrimony. He is willing to remain
the golden plover's messmate and friend in
the daily relations of winter life; but,
he refuses to enter into any community of
political and vernal doctrines with him. The
moral superiority of the four-toed bird is
further displayed in the crested lapwing.
Why this crest on the English peewit ? Why
do we find an attribute of royalty adorning
one head and not another?

The crest, it appears, is an honorary reward
bestowed upon the peewit, both for his
exemplary domestic conduct, and for the numerous
services of a composite kind which he renders
to his lord and master, man. The peewit is
not content with supplying us, in October,
with savoury meat; in spring, he presents us
with exquisitely delicate eggs, at least as good
as those of the domestic hen. He does not
restrict his benefits to the pleasures of the
table; he affords us sport on the grandest
scale. At large, he protects the dikes of
Holland from the ravages of worms, which
would otherwise undermine them. For that
reason, he prefers the Polders to any other
residence —plains which lie beneath the level
of the sea, and have been rescued from the
waves by the industry of man. In captivity
he ornaments our gardens by the finished
graces of his elegant person. He wages a
relentless war against earth-worms, grubs,
slugs, and snails. Boldly setting his face
against the loose and shameful morals of his
neighbours, he alone dares to display the
noble standard of conjugal fidelity.
Henceforth, the crest of the peewit will puzzle
nobody. The answer to the enigma is openly
published. The flight of this bird in a state
of excitement, is not less rich in somersaults
and pirouettes than that of the snipe when
deeply in love. And if the lapwing cannot,
like him, bleat like a goat to declare his
passion, he makes up for it by mewing like
a cat.

As soon as Nature had decided to make the
dusting-birds the intimate friends of man,
she could not well do otherwise than confer
upon them great advantages; on the females,
intellectual charms and exuberant fertility;
on the males, glorious corpulence and external
beauty. One species, the domestic hen,
furnishes for the yearly consumption of Paris
alone, a hundred and twenty millions
of eggs, and many millions of chickens.
Fourier, who looked down so contemptuously
on the feeble genius of those unhappy
statesmen who are embarrassed by a
deficiency of a few thousand millions (of francs),
has pointed out the means of paying off the
English national debt with no other bank to
draw upon, than the common hen.

Nature has so regularly constituted the
series of dusters, and has so artistically limited
the boundaries of the genera, that she has
really made each physical character of the
bird an element of classification. Contrary
to the opinion of learned men, you may take
this family by the feet, by the head, by the
neck, by the tail, by the colour, by the origin,
by the country, by the locality, without incurring
the least risk of error. For head-dress,
there is the aigrette of the peafowl, the tuft
of the pheasant, the longitudinal comb
of the cock, the helmet of the guinea-fowl, and the
bald and caruncled pate of the turkey. There
are rudimental tails, short tails, middle-sized
tails, outrageous tails. There are tails
square, tails round, tails lyre-shaped, tails
wheel- and fan-wise. But, the series has
something better than that, to serve it as a
separative type. It is a mark of such
superior importance, that merely to indicate
it renders all mention of the others
unnecessary. The spur is the feature now
referred to.

The spur is no mere accident in the way in