a house at Poole, were observed to continue their visits to the
nest long after the time when the young birds take flight. This unusual
circumstance continued throughout the year; and in the winter, a
gentleman who had all along observed them, determined on investigating
the cause. He therefore mounted a ladder, and found one of the young
ones detained a prisoner, by means of a piece of string, or worsted,
which formed part of the nest, having become accidentally twisted round
its leg. Being thus incapacitated from procuring its own sustenance, it
had been fed by the continued exertions of its parents.

An old man belonging to the neighborhood of Glasgow, who was a soldier
in his youth, mentions, that he became first reconciled to a foreign
country, by observing a sparrow hopping about just as he had seen them
do at home. "Are you here too, freen?" said he to the sparrow. He does
not add that it returned a verbal answer to his exclamatory question;
but he could not help fancying that it looked assent, as if it
understood he was an exile, and wished him to take a lesson of
resignation to circumstances.

THE CROW.

_Miscellaneous Anecdotes._--In the year 1816, a Scotch newspaper states
that a common crow, perceiving a brood of young chickens, fourteen in
number, under the care of a parent hen, picked up one of them; but a
young lady, seeing what had happened, suddenly pulled up the window,
and calling out loudly, the plunderer dropped his prey. In the course
of the day, however, the audacious and calculating robber, accompanied
by thirteen others, came to the place where the chickens were, and each
seizing one, got clearly off with the whole brood at once.

An instance of sagacity in the crow is told by Dr. Darwin. He had a
friend, on the northern coast of Ireland, who noticed above a hundred
crows at once, feeding on mussels. The plan they took to break them
was, each to lift one in its bill, and ascend about thirty or forty
yards in the air, and from thence let the mussels drop upon stones;
thus they secured the flesh of the animal inhabitants.

During the war between Augustus Caesar and Mark Antony, when the world
looked with anxiety which way Fortune would turn herself, an indigent
man in Rome, in order to be prepared to take advantage of whichever way
she might incline, determined on making a bold hit for his own
advancement; he had recourse, therefore, to the following ingenious
expedient: He applied himself