“Home, my dear Rosa,” replied our heroine, “there I enjoy myself much more than I ever have during my visit to the city, and yet, mamma,” added she, “if I had a house in Savannah, I would have young ladies to visit me, and I know I would make these visits delightful.”
They now returned to the parlor, where they had left Mr. Seymour, and after tea, Clara sat once more with Edward in the fragrant vine-covered piazza, before mentioned, where the moonbeams sparkled on the seat they occupied, through a richly blossoming mass of yellow jessamine—that dear seat, which seemed intended for the very use of which it was made, namely, that of Edward’s offering his hand, and of Clara’s accepting the offer, which was sealed by—no matter what it was sealed by, gentle reader, only accept that patient lover, whom you have been so long trifling with, and you will soon find out for yourself.
BY HENRY WILLIAM HERBERT, AUTHOR OF “WARWICK WOODLANDS,” “MY SHOOTING BOX,” ETC.
IT is a singular thing, and one which elucidates the great research necessary, and the extreme difficulties encountered, in the attempt to establish facts of natural history with regard to birds of passage, that this beautiful little bird, the general favorite of the sportsman and the epicure, well known to all classes of men, and a visitant, in some one of its closely allied varieties, of every known nation, is still a mystery, as regards some of its habits, and continues to baffle the inquiries of the most learned and inquisitive ornithologists.
Its habits, the nature of its food, and therefore the necessities of its existence, render it an inhabitant of temperate climates, and of regions in which the moist and loamy soil, from which it derives its sustenance of small worms, insects, and the like, is not frozen during the period of its visitations so hard as to preclude its boring with its delicate and sensitive bill for its semi-aquatic prey of worms and larvæ.
Still, as extreme cold prevents it from obtaining subsistence, extreme heat would appear to be still less congenial to its tastes or temperament; for, whereas it lingers in the north until autumnal frosts seal up the marshes and the soft stream margins against its probing bill, it flies from its winter quarters in the rice-fields of Carolina and Georgia, and the farther morasses of Texas and New Mexico, the instant that opening spring admits of its return to the fresh meadows and pure rivulets of the north-east.