maple wood with guns and
powder and shot for that purpose. If we open the craw of one of these
little birds, we find in it green stuff of various descriptions, and,
generally, more or less of grass, and, therefore, it is a little too much
to believe, that, in taking away our buds, they merely relieve us from the
insects that would, in time, eat us up. Birds are exceedingly cunning in
their generation; but, luckily for us gardeners, they do not know how to
distinguish between the report of a gun loaded with powder and shot, and
one that is only loaded with powder. Very frequent firing with powder will
alarm them so that they will quit the spot, or, at least, be so timid as
to become comparatively little mischievous.

* * * * *

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

* * * * *

THE DANDY TRAVELLER.

There is a class of travelling oddities--the dandy _voyageurs_ of
Britain, who, teeming with the proud consciousness of their excellence in
comparison with the rest of human kind, swoln with self-sufficiency, float
like empty bubbles on the water's surface, and who seem as if they would
break and be dissolved by contact with a vulgar touch. They contrive to
swim by means of their air-blown vanity until they come into concussion
with some material object, and are at once reduced to their proper level,
and for ever annihilated. Their country is London; their domicile
Regent-street; thence they would never travel, had they their wills,--not
but they would like to see Paris, and move at Longschamps, or admire its
beauties in an equipage _a D'Aumont_; but the horrors attendant upon
such an enterprise are too formidable gratuitously to be encountered. It
is only when a dip at the Fishmonger's has been rather too often tried, or
Stultz's _billets-doux_ have been repeated with increasing ardour on
the part of the Tailor-lover until he delegates the maintenance of his
_baronial_ purse to some dandy-detesting attorney, that they feel it
expedient to brave the dangers of sea and land, and, unscrewing their
brass spurs, folding up their mustachios in a _port-feuille_, they
hasten them from life and love, and London, and set them down at
Meurice's, the creatures of another element; not less new to all things
around them, than all things there are new to them. It was not long since
I met one at the _table-d'hote_ of Mr. Money, the hospitable but
expensive owner of Les Troi