supplied with this beautiful Sparrow. But no sooner does it make its appearance than trap-cages are set, and a regular business is commenced in the market of that city. The method employed in securing the male Painted Finch is so connected with its pugnacious habits, that I feel inclined to describe it, especially as it is so different from the common mode of alluring birds, that it may afford you, kind reader,

some amusement.

"A male bird in full plumage is shot and stuffed in a defensive attitude, and perched among some grass seed, rice, or other food, on the same platform as the trap-cage. This is taken to the fields or near the orangeries, and placed in so open a situation that it would be difficult for a living bird to fly over it without observing it. The trap is set. A male Painted Finch passes-perceives it, and dives towards the stuffed bird, with all the anger which its little breast can contain. It alights on the edge of the trap for a moment, and throwing its body against the stuffed bird, brings down the trap, and is made prisoner. In this manner thousands of these birds are caught every spring. So pertinacious are they in their attacks, that even when the trap has closed upon them, they continue pecking at the features of the supposed rival. The approach of man seems to allay its anger in a moment. The live bird is removed to the lower apartment of the cage, and is thereby made to assist in decoying others.

"They feed almost immediately after being caught; and if able to bear the loss of liberty for a few days, may be kept for several years. I have known some instances of their being kept in confinement for upwards of ten years. Few vessels leave the port of New Orleans, during the summer months, without taking some Painted Finches; and through this means they are transported probably to all parts of Europe. I have seen them offered for sale in London and Paris, with the trifling difference of value on each individual,

which converted the sixpence paid for it in New Orleans to three guineas in London.

"The pugnacious habits of this species are common, in a great degree, to the whole family of Sparrows. Like the most daring, the common House Sparrow of Europe, they may be observed in spring time, in little groups of four, five, or six, fighting together-moving round each other so as to secure an advantageous position, pecking and pulling at each other's feathers with all the violence and animosity to which their small degree of strength can give effect."

CHAPTER XV.

"

OUT OF DOORS WITH NATURE.

OUT of doors! We weary of this unceasing labor-are choking to death of the stagnant air of heaped up cities, which, with their gutter-defiled trigonometries, set at defiance, of assoilation, the straight currents of Heaven's fresh airleaving us to moan and swelter amidst pestilential stagnations!

Let us go, O ye who yearn for purer odors than the steam of the kitchen! Let us go forth-out of doors with Nature! Aye! and when her fresh breath shall come upon our seamed and heated brows, it shall be with an alchemy more strange than the Elixir of vain Cagliostro-more marvellous than all Spells, Philosophers' Stones, and Fortunatus' Caps-more potent than the wizard edicts of that eldest brother of shadowy science-hoar Astrology!

To be sure we ought all of us to be astrologists-perhaps minus the science; for should we not feel humbly-that, as we are children of the earth, so we may be moved as she is moved, in that of us which is earthy?-and that, as the stars are God's flowers of thought-so are those meek wild flowers which we find upon her bosom, the starry bloomings of the thought of earth! Should we not learn, too, to read their teachings?—perhaps thus the blossoming of Life may be renewed in us.

Be this as it may-these flowers, and trees, and birds-we love them best and dearly "out of doors!"

We know that these Stars may speak drear things to us,