stop to the indiscriminate
slaughter of birds by their ruthless gamekeepers, we should not have to
visit Holland to see the true habits of the stork, nor roam through
Germany to enjoy the soaring of the kite--a bird once very common in this
part of Yorkshire, but now a total stranger to it." The progressive
extinction of so many of the larger species of birds once indigenous to
England before the progress of drainage and clearing; has long been a
subject of regret not only to the naturalist but the sportsman. Of the
stately bustard, once the ornament of all our downs, scarce a solitary
straggler now remains--the crane, as well as the stork, which once
abounded in the fen districts, has totally disappeared; and though the
success which has attended the attempts to re-introduce the capercailzie
in Scotland has restored to us one of our lost species, it is much to be
feared that unless Mr Waterton's example, in converting his park into a
sanctuary, be followed by other country gentlemen of ornithological
tastes, the raven, the crow, and the larger species of hawks, in whose
preservation no one is interested, and which are already becoming _rarae
aves_, in the agricultural districts, will eventually disappear from the
British Fauna.

The great influx of English into Belgium, while scarce any are to be found
in Holland, is attributed, probably with reason, to the national love of
sight-seeing, which finds gratification in the ceremonies and decorations
of the Belgian churches--"up and down which crowds of English are for ever
sauntering.... 'How have you got over your time to-day?' I said one
afternoon to an acquaintance, who, like Mr Noddy's eldest son in Sterne,
was travelling through Europe at a prodigious speed, and had very little
spare time on his hands. He said he had knocked off thirteen churches that
morning!" The headquarters of the English residents appear to be at
Bruges, and Mr Waterton highly approves of the selection:--"Did my habits
allow me to prefer streets to woods and green fields, I could retire to
Bruges, and there end my days." But after visiting the convent of English
nuns, where some of the ladies of Mr Waterton's family had received their
education, and the portrait of "that regal profligate, Charles II." (Mr
Waterton's love of truth here gets the better of his ancestral
predilections for the house of Stuart) in the hall of the ancient society
of archers, of which he was a member during his exile, t