And mock your workings in a second body. SHAKESPEARE "King Henry IV.," Part II. 1. THE LORD CHIEF-JUSTICE, Sir William Gascoigne, ChiefJustice of the Court of King's Bench in the reign of Henry IV., who committed to prison Prince, afterwards King, Henry V., because he attempted to rescue one of his companions who had been condemned to punishment; the Prince submitted to the Judge with a good grace, and afterwards treated him with respect and esteem. BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF WHITE OF THE Reverend Gilbert White was born in the village of Selborne in Hampshire, in the year 1720, and died in 1793. More than forty years of his life were spent in his beautiful native village, in deep and loving study of the mysteries of nature, and he was the first man, who taught us, that Natural History was more than a mere dry classification of names and species that the commonest object of creation, when carefully examined, and diligently watched, is calculated to excite our wonder, admiration, and interest. The results of Mr White's observations were contributed in the form of letters to his friends, and the whole form one of the most charming books in the English language, “The Natural History of Selborne," from whose pages the following extract is taken. THE HOUSE-MARTIN. IN obedience to your injunction I sit down to give you some account of the house-martin or martlet. A few house-martins begin to appear about the sixteenth of April; usually some few days later than the swallows. For some time after they appear, the hirundines 1 in general pay no attention to the business of nidification, but play and sport about, either to recruit from the fatigue of their journey, if they do migrate at all, or else that their blood may recover its true tone and texture, after it has been so long benumbed by the severities of winter. About the middle of May, if the weather be fine, the martin begins to think in earnest of providing a mansion for his family. The crust or shell of this nest seems to be formed of such dirt or loam, as comes most readily to hand, and is tempered and wrought together with little bits of broken straws, to render it tough and tenacious.3 As this bird often builds against a perpendicular wall without any projecting ledge under, it requires its utmost efforts to get the first foundation firmly fixed, so that it may safely carry the superstructure. On this occasion the bird not only clings with its claws, but partly supports itself by strongly inclining its tail against the wall, making that a fulcrum ; and, thus steadied, it works and plasters the materials into the face of brick or stone. But then that their work may not, while it is soft and green, pull itself down by its own weight, the provident 4 architect has prudence and forbearance enough not to advance the work too fast; but by building only in the morning, and dedicating the rest of the day to food and amusement, gives it sufficient time to dry and harden. About half an inch seems to be a sufficient layer for a day. Thus careful workmen, when they build mud-walls (informed, at first, perhaps, by this little bird), raise but a moderate layer at a time, and then desist, lest the work should become top-heavy, and so be ruined by its own weight. By this method, in about ten or twelve days, is formed a hemispheric nest with a small aperture towards the top, strong, compact, and warm; and perfectly fitted for all the purposes for which it was intended. But then nothing is more common than for the house-sparrow, as soon as the shell is finished, to seize on it as its own, to eject the owner, and to line it after its own manner. After so much labour has been bestowed in erecting a mansion, as nature seldom works in vain, martins will breed on for several years together in the same nest, where it happens to be well sheltered and secure from the injuries of weather. The shell or crust of the nest is a sort of rustic work full of knobs and protuberances 5 on the outside; nor is the inside of those that I have examined smoothed with any exactness at all, but is rendered soft and warm by a lining of small straws, grasses, and feathers, and sometimes by a bed of moss interwoven with wool. 6 When the young martins arrive at their full growth, they soon become impatient of confinement, and sit all day long with their heads out at the orifice, where the mothers, by clinging to the nest, supply them with food from morning to night. For a time the young are fed 7 on the wing by their parents; but the feat is done by so quick and almost imperceptible a sleight, that a person must have attended very exactly to their motions, before he would be able to perceive it. As soon as the young are able to shift for themselves, the female martins immediately turn their thoughts to the business of a second brood; while the first flight, shaken off and rejected by their nurses, congregate in great flocks, and are the birds that are seen clustering and hovering on sunny mornings and evenings round towers and steeples, and on the roofs of churches and houses. These congregatings usually begin to take place about the first week in August; and therefore we may conclude, that by that time the first flight is pretty well over. The young of this species do not quit their abodes all together; but the more forward birds get abroad some days before the rest. These, approaching the eaves of buildings, and playing about before them, make people think that several old birds attend one nest. Martins are often capricious in fixing on a nestingplace, beginning many edifices, and leaving them unfinished; but, when once a nest is completed in a sheltered place, it serves for several seasons. Those which breed in a ready-finished house get the start, in hatching, of those that build a new one, by ten days or a fortnight. These industrious artificers are at their labours in the long days before four in the morning; when they fix their materials they plaster them on with their chins, moving their heads with a quick vibratory s motion. They dip and wash as they fly, sometimes in hot weather, but not so frequently as swallows. It has been observed that martins usually build to a northeast or north-west aspect, that the heat of the sun may Lot crack and destroy their nests; but instances are also recorded of their breeding for many years in vast abundance, in a hot stifled inn-yard, against a wall facing the south. Martins are by far the least agile of the four species of the English hirundines-the swallow, the swift, and the bank-martin. Their wings and tails are short, and therefore they are not capable of such surprising turns, and quick, glancing evolutions as the swallow. Accordingly they make use of a placid easy motion in a middle region of the air, seldom mounting to any great height, and never sweeping long together over the surface of the land or water. They do not wander far for food, but affect sheltered districts, over some lake, or under some hanging wood, or in some hollow vale, especially in windy weather. They breed the latest of all the swallow kind: in 1772 they had nestlings on October 21; and are never without unfledged young as late as Michael mas. As the summer declines, the congregating flocks increase in numbers daily, by the constant accession of the second broods, till at last they swarm in myriads round the villages on the Thames, darkening the face of the sky as they frequent the aits of that river, where they roost. They retire, the bulk of them I mean, in vast flocks together about the beginning of October; but have appeared of late years in a considerable flight in the neighbourhood of Selborne for one or two days, as late as November 5th or 6th, after they were supposed to have been gone for more than a fortnight. They therefore withdrew from us the latest of any species. Unless these birds are very short-lived indeed, or unless they do not return to the district where they are |