“Columbae, or Pigeons,” &c.  An outline of Mr. Vigors’s Quinary System, is also given, and the reader referred to proper sources for illustrations.  The Editor then, leaving the beaten path of his predecessors, rambles through “fields and forests, unfettered by system, but alive to whatever he meets with likely to interest for its curiosity or its novelty.”  The birds are classed according to their peculiar labours:  thus, there are Mining Birds, Ground Builders, Mason and Carpenter Birds, Platform Builders, Basket-making Birds, Weaver Birds, Tailor Birds, Felt-making Birds, Cementers, Dome-builders, and Parasite Birds.  Each division is so abundantly attractive to the observer of Nature in field or folio, that we scarcely know how to decide on an extract; and the reader will readily admit this dilemma, if he but recollects the early enthusiasm, wonder, and delight, with which he must have regarded a Bird’s Nest, unless he has been pent up all his life in the brick and mortar and chimney groves of a metropolis.  Even then, the ingenuity of rooks may have occurred to him as not a whit less wonderful than the proud glories of art with which he has been environed.  It is, however, time to determine, and we, accordingly, choose the following:—­

The Osprey.

It would appear that the Americans are very fond of these birds, from some prevalent superstition connected with them.  “It has been considered,” says Dr. S. Mitchill, of New York, “a fortunate incident to have a nest and a pair of these birds on one’s farm.  They have, therefore, been generally respected, and neither the axe nor the gun has been lifted against them.  Their nest continues from year to year.  The same couple, or another, as the case may be, occupies it season after season.  Repairs are duly made; or, when demolished by storms, it is industriously rebuilt.  There was one of these nests, formerly, upon the leafless summit of a venerable chestnut-tree, on our farm, directly in front of the house, at the distance of less than half a mile.  The withered trunk and boughs, surmounted by the coarse-wrought and capacious nest, was a more picturesque object than an obelisk; and the flights of the hawks, as they went forth to hunt, returned with their game, exercised themselves in wheeling round and round, and circling about it, were amusing to the beholder, almost from morning till night.  The family of these hawks, old and young, was killed by the Hessian jagers.  A succeeding pair took possession of the nest; but, in the course of time, the prongs of the trunk so rotted away that the nest could no longer be supported.  The hawks have been obliged to seek new quarters.  We have lost this part of our prospect, and our trees have not afforded a convenient site for one of their habitations since."[4]

    [4] Wilson, Amer.  Ornith. v. 15.

Herons and Heronries.