girls of the house where she had visited to spend the next afternoon with me. In the morning, I longed more than ever to tell her all; I even began, but the words seemed to choke me, and I ran away to school without having so done. I knew I should be required to put on the lawn; and I lingered on the way home, and paused a long time on the door-step, fearing to go in, because then my secret must come out. At last, I softly opened the door, and stepped into the sitting-room. My mother sat by the window, sewing. I went up to her so quietly that she did not hear me. In her lap lay my new buff frock, and she was putting the last stitches into the nicest piece of darning ever done in the world! I started with both joy and alarm, and my mother looked round with a smile, saying, "Why, my little daughter is late to-day!" and that was all! I knelt down by her side, hid my face in her lap, had a hearty cry, and felt better. The girls soon came, and we had a happy afternoon.

My mother said nothing about my frock for days after-not even to ask how I had torn it; but her silent, forbearing kindness did more to make me careful in future than any punishment or scolding could have done. Yet I still tore frocks occasionally; and, even now, I sometimes tear my best dresses, and expect to tear them, as long as I live.

When, a year or two after my apple-tree adventure, I saw my sister Sophie cutting up my out-grown buff lawn for a bed-quilt, I begged a scrap containing that nicely-darned rent, which I had always thought the prettiest part of the frock, and laid it carefully away among my little treasures, where I kept it for many years, as “a specimen of my mother's fine needlework," I told others, but, in truth, as a reminder of her patience and goodness towards her careless and luckless child.

THE RIVER.

S. G. GOODRICH.

Better known as the author of those works which young persons
have so much admired under the name of " Peter Parley.'

O, TELL me, pretty river!
Whence do thy waters flow?
And whither art thou roaming,
So pensive and so slow?

"My birthplace was the mountain;
My nurse, the April showers;
My cradle was a fountain,
O'ercurtained by wild flowers.

F

Ir is well known that some kinds of animals, which were once common, have become extinct; leaving traces of their existence, however, in the fossil skeletons and other remains which have been from time to time discovered. The period in which these animals lived is, generally speaking, so far removed from the present day, as to make

their skeletons the only means we have of obtaining information respecting them. One animal, however, has become extinct almost within the memory of man, and this animal is the Dodo. This creature was a bird greatly resembling a turkey, but much larger, totally incapable of flying, and which, as it was well adapted for food, and so unwieldly as to be easily run down, evidently could not long continue to exist in any inhabitated country.

The Dodo was only found in those islands of the Indian Ocean which, on their first discovery by Europeans, were uninhabited or difficult of access to the nearest people. The group which is situated to the eastward of Madagascar, consisting of Bourbon, Mauritius, and Rodrigue, were almost the only islands of this description met with by the early circumnavigators of the Cape; and it is there that we find the last traces of this very remarkable bird, which disappeared, of course, from Bourbon and the Mauritius first, on account of their being more visited and finally colonised by the French; and lastly from Rodrigue, an island extremely difficult of access, and without any bay or safe anchorage for shipping.

Of this island we have an account in a work written by Leguat, who, with seven others, was left upon Rodrigue, with a view to its colonisation, in May, 1691; and it appears that they must have been very much struck with the appearance of this singular bird, as Leguat has introduced figures of it into his frontispiece, his general chart of the island, and his plan of their little colony; in the latter, twelve. and in the former sixteen, individuals being distributed over their respective surfaces.

The island of Rodrigue, or Diego Ruys, although seen by several of the earlier voyagers, after the discovery of the route to India by the Cape, does not appear to have been visited anterior to the voyage of Leguat; from its unapproachable appearance, and the apparent continuity of the extensive reef which everywhere surrounds it, and upon which the sea continually breaks, at a very considerable distance from the shore. The same causes still operate in repelling the tide of colonisation; as at the time of our late conquest of the group to which it belongs, a single French family constituted the whole of its population. Leguat and his companions, then, may be presumed to have seen the island before it was inhabited, a circumstance which makes his narration doubly interesting, and shows not only the abundance of its animal productions, but the paradisiacal peace and amity which appeared to reign amongst them, and the little dread they seemed to possess at the presence of their destined destroyer. Leguat says:

"Of all the birds which inhabit this island, the most remarkable is that which has been called Solitaire (the solitary), because they are rarely seen in flocks, although there is abundance of them.

"The males have generally a greyish or brown plumage, the feet of the turkey-cock, as also the beak, but a little more hooked. They have hardly any tail, and their posterior, covered with feathers, is rounded like the croup of a horse. They stand higher than the turkey-cock, and have a straight neck, a little longer in proportion than it is in that bird when it raises its head. The eye is black and lively, and the head without any crest or tuft. They do not fly, their wings being too short to support the weight of their bodies; they only use them in beating their sides and in whirling round; when they wish to call one another, they make, with rapidity, twenty or thirty rounds in the same direction during the space of four or five minutes; the movement of their wings then makes a noise which approaches exceedingly that of a kestrel, and which is heard at more than two hundred paces distant. The bone of the false pinion is enlarged at its extremity, and forms, under the feathers, a little round mass like a musket bullet; this and their beak form the prin cipal defence of this bird. It is extremely difficult to catch them in the woods; sometimes they may even be approached very easily. From the month of March until September they are extremely fat, and of most excellent flavour, especially when young. The males may be found up to the weight of forty-five pounds, or over fifty pounds.

"The female is of admirable beauty. Some are nearly white, others of a brown colour. They have a kind of band, like the bandeaus of windows, above the beak, which is of a tan colour. One feather does not pass another over all their body, because they take care to adjust and polish them with their beak. The feathers are rounded into a shell-like form, and, as they are very dense, produce a very agreeable effect. They walk with so much stateliness and grace combined, that it is impossible not to admire and feel compassion for them; so much so, that the appearance of one of these birds has often saved its life.

'Although these birds approach, at times, very familiarly when they are not chased, they are incapable of being tamed; as soon as caught, they drop tears, without making any noise, and refuse obstinately all kind of nourishment, until at last they die. There is always found in their gizzard a brown stone, the size of a hen's egg; it is slightly tuberculated, flat on one side, and rounded on the other, very heavy and very hard. We imagined that this stone was born

with them; because, however young they might be, they always had it, and never more than one; and, besides this circumstance, the canal which passes from the crop to the gizzard is by one-half too small to give passage to such a mass. We used them, in preference

to any other stone, to sharpen our knives.

"When these birds set about building their nests, they choose a clear spot, and raise it a foot and a half off the ground, upon a heap of leaves of the palm-tree, which they collect together for the purpose. They only lay one egg, which is very much larger than that of a goose. The male and female sit by turns, and the egg does not hatch until a period of seven weeks. During the whole period of incubation, or that they are rearing their young one, which is not capable of providing for itself until after several months, they will not suffer any bird of their own kind to approach within two hundred paces of their nest; and what is very singular is, that the male never chases away the females; only, when he perceives one, he makes, in whirling, his ordinary noise, to call his companion, who immediately comes and gives chase to the stranger, and which she does not quit until driven without their limits. The female does the same, and allows the males to be driven off by her mate. This is a circumstance that we so often witnessed, that I speak of it with certainty. These combats last sometimes for a long time, because the stranger only turns off, without going in a straight line from the nest; nevertheless, the others never quit until they have chased him away.”

RESOLUTION AND INDEPENDENCE.

WORDSWORTH.

THERE was a roaring in the wind all night;
The rain came heavily, and fell in floods;
But now the sun is rising calm and bright;
The birds are singing in the distant woods;
Over his own sweet voice the stock-dove broods;
The jay makes answer as the magpie chatters,
And all the air is filled with pleasant noise of waters.

All things that love the sun are out of doors:

The sky rejoices in the morning's birth;

The grass is bright with rain-drops; -on the moors

The hare is running races in her mirth;

And with her feet she from the plashy earth