and a heavy-bodied creature, cannot feed on the
wing, and therefore has some trouble to get at
the fruits which grow chiefly on the fragile
crowns, and at the end of slender twigs and
branches of the forest trees; wherefore it
perches its fat, dull, heavy person on a stout
branch capable of bearing its weight, and then
lunges its huge bill forward, and snaps off the
bunch it has determined for its dinner. All
animals and insects which feed on fruit and
flowers must have means to get at these things;
so, we find that monkeys use their hands and
their tails; humming-birds can hold themselves
poised while feeding, as no other bird can; the
beautiful trogons, which have feeble wings, sit
quietly on the low branches eyeing long the
fruits they desire, then dart off, as if with an
effort, every time they want a mouthful, and so
back to their perch again; and the bill of the
toucan, like the neck and lips of the giraffe,
stretches itself out in marvellous accord between
need and means.

A curious habit among the smaller birds is that
of hunting in flocks. Days may pass without a
bird being met with in the forests, when suddenly
scores and hundreds are fallen upon, including all
kinds—woodpeckers, and ant-thrushes, humming-
birds, flycatchers, barbets, tanagers, and others,
congregated together, but each occupied for and
by itself, though all moving in concert, and acted
on by an unity of will. Every leaf and twig
and square inch of bark is examined; the barbets
visiting all the clayey nests of termites on the
trees in the line of march; and then, in a few
moments, the business has been transacted, the
insects have been eaten, and the little fellows
twitter and flutter onward, leaving the forest
path as silent and deserted as it was a moment
ago. The Indians, with all their accurate
observations, not seeing that these hunting parties
are for the purpose of food, say that the flocks
are led by a little grey bird called the Papá-uirá,
which fascinates the rest, and leads them a weary
dance through the thickets; wherefore they think
that if they can but get hold of the skin and
feathers of Papá-uirá they will never want for
lovers. The hunters receive a high price from
the girls for the skins; but Mr. Bates could
never learn what the bird was like; and, after
the man whom he employed to bring him a Papá-
uirá, and who was a noted woodsman, had
brought him three different species, he gave up
the story and the bird as mere idle humbug.

Impish hordes of vampire bats make a low,
dull, fanning sound in the forest as they wave
their leathery wings to and fro; but the vampire
is a harmless beast, and leaves human creatures
alone; it is the little grey blood-sucking Phyllostoma,
or leaf-nosed bat, that drains the sleeper's
life-blood out at the end of his great toe.
Numbers of bats of various kinds are to be
found in the daytime clinging to the under-side
of palm-leaves, or to the dark trunks of trees,
or crouched in the shadow of any broad leaf
likely to shield them from observation; but in
general they go off to the forest at night to feed,
coming back to the village at daylight to sleep,
being more secure from their natural enemies
there than when in the woods. So numerous
are they, that the place where they gather—
especially in a room or under cover—is quite
blackened by them; they will put out any
number of lights, and almost smother the sleeper
in his hammock by crawling over him, if they do
not bleed him to death.

A short article like this cannot attempt to
detail half the pleasant things to be found in two
volumes where every page is as rich as a fairy
tale in beauty and novelty. Wherefore, all that
Mr. Bates has to tell of tortoises and turtles,
alligators and snakes, butterflies and flowers,
plants and Indians, and manner of life, and
climate, and geography, and a hundred other
things beside, must be left to the diligence of the
reader, to whom this present short abstract will
doubtless serve simply as a whet to the fuller
satisfaction of curiosity. One thing for which
Mr. Bates will not be thanked by certain persons,
is the humiliating discovery which his book
forces on us, that all our manuals and
encyclopædias of natural history are quite wrong and
defective, and that a new issue ought to be at
once undertaken to include his eight thousand
new species, and all the information he has to
give concerning his old ones.

AN UNFORTUNATE PRINCESS.

ON a certain March evening in the year of Our
Lord 1751, Frederick Prince of Wales, son of
George the Second and father of George the
Third, died at his house in Leicester-fields, in
the arms of Desnoyers, a French dancing-master
who had been called in to soothe the last
tremendous moments of the royal spendthrift with
the twang of his favourite violin. On the 13th
of the June following, his widow gave birth
to a baby princess, known to history as Caroline
Matilda, the beautiful, imprudent, and
unfortunate Queen of Denmark, about whose guilt or
innocence there has been almost as much
controversy as about that of Mary Stuart, and with
as little likelihood of ever coming to a distinct
and certain conclusion. The Princess of Wales
was a stern-mannered, though in reality a loving
and careful mother; still, so stern that once,
when the little Duke of Gloucester was sitting
deep in melancholy thought, and she asked him
sharply what he was thinking of, he was able to
answer, "I was thinking that if ever I have a son
I will not make him as unhappy as you make me."

Caroline Matilda, it is to be supposed, bore
her share with the rest; but we hear nothing of
her life until the fatal year arrived when, at the
age of fifteen, she found herself first the
betrothed, and then the wife, of a fair-haired,
undersized, gay-tempered, handsome, dissolute young
scamp of seventeen, Christian the Seventh, King
of Denmark. "Diminutive as if he came out
of a kernel in the fairy tales," with, adds
Walpole, in another place, "the sublime strut of
his grandfather (or a cock sparrow)."

The young queen was in her fresh girlhood;