e City Hall.

On visiting the Battery a few days ago, one of the park-keepers (himself
looking in his bright new uniform somewhat like a blue-jay) expressed
his conviction that, next spring, that time-honored pleasure-garden of
the old Knickerbockers will be a paradise for song-birds such as it has
not been since the original Swedish Nightingale warbled her "woodnotes
wild" there a score of years ago, more or less. The sea-gulls, he
thought (will Judge HILTON have the goodness to provide these park
officers with manuals of ornithology?), would build their nests in the
pine-trees with which the wide esplanade that stretches away to the
water's edge will soon be bristling. Honest, but mistaken young man! As
well might he have said that the sea-wall [a very substantial one, by
the way] would build its nest in the melancholy pines. But it is
reasonable to hope that pine grossbeaks will find their way thither, and
that the German flutes of various finches will provide for the coming
Bavarians and Hessians (should any be left after the siege of Paris and
the _sorties_ of the truculent TROCHU) a welcome such as has not
heretofore been accorded to the strangers who at Castle Garden first set
foot upon our shore.

The Bowling Green--late a nuisance and a pandemonium, now an oasis of
verdure--has not as yet reported its owl, but the public eye is upon it,
and the nocturnal marauder may yet be detected in the forks of the great
willow-trees, which still retain their verdure. The sparrows are almost
disproportionately numerous in this small park, but this may be
accounted for. It has lately been laid down with new grass, the green,
tender blades of which, just now beginning to crop out, are probably
mistaken by the birds for "sparrow-grass" munificently provided for them
by the Commissioners.

In all of these city parks the contrast between past and present is very
striking and agreeable. But a few short months ago they were the
domiciles and dormitories of outcast roughs and vagrants of the worst
description, whose "'owls," as a Cockney explorer observed, "made night
'ideous." The only muss now common to them is the _mus_ tribe,
comprising the _mus ratus_, or ordinary rat (so called from its haunting
ordinaries, we suppose), and the timid mouse, with which the Bird of
Wisdom is contented to put up when the sparrows decline to come to his
claw.

Central Park offers numerous attractions now to all who love to keep up
their anim