three oftriches affociated together and fitting in company, as I have seen and already mentioned, he may procure a still greater number.

A naturalist unacquainted with thefe facts may easily be led into an error. Accordingly, when a favage tells him

that he has taken from an oftrich's neft 60 or 80 eggs, and perhaps more, he ought thus to account for the circumftance, and not imagine that there is any great variation in the number laid by different individuals of this fpecies.

CANNOT help expreffing my regret that Sparmann, who was fo little Preffed for time when he undertook his journey, or Paterfon who feems to have travelled post, and as a mau eager to finish his expedition, had not formed the defiga of penetrating into the country of the Kabobiquas, and as far even as the mountains of the Houzouanas.

What treasures would these learned botanists have found there! And what riches might they not have brought away with them!

I have myself, indeed, but a few fcore drawings, to prove what science might have gained by their means: yet I invite other travellers to undertake what my little knowledge of botany prevented me from performing; and I dare promife them before hand the most fplendid fuccefs. But at the fame time I must tell them, that they ought to dedicate feveral years to their researches, without which it will be impoffible for them to accomplish their purpose to any great extent.

It is not in Africa as in what are called the temperate countries of Europe. In thefe, nature gives the earth to vegetate part of the year only, while, during the other part, it is dead and lifeless. In Africa, on the contrary, there is no interruption.The foil, warmed by the continual heat, is always fertile; and every month yields its plants, its flowers, and its fruits. Nor is there, as in Europe, a gradual developement and re

gular fucceffion. It is not the feafon, nor is it the greater or lefs propinquity of the equator, that occafions a more or less abundant vegetation.The fun itself, elsewhere confidered as the primary cause of fertility, is here the fecondary only. Its heat, it is true, is affifting to the birth,growth, and ripening of vegetables; but they are the rains more particularly that occafion them to fpring up and unfold themselves, that determine in great measure the place and time of their appearance, and cause them to shew themfelves in one place fooner than in another. Now as the rains themfelves are owing to the fituation of the mountains which attract the clouds, it follows, that they may be very unequally diftributed, and that one fpot may be deluged with them, while another properly watered, fhall dif play a vigorous state of vegetation, and a third, dry and parched, exhibit only the image of death and defolation.

From this fortuitous occurrence of the rains, fome vegetables have a fort of accidental fucceffion, according to the fpots on which they grow, that naturally they ought not to have.Thus in one place a fpecies of flower has just blown, which farther on appeared fix weeks before, and which, ten leagues farther ftill, will perhaps not bloffom in less than two months. In Africa, nature is always alive, and her action never benumbed by cold: but it is neceffary to be on the watch for her; and the botanist who tra

verfes the country, without refiding in it a confiderable time, muft expect only the fortune of the day, and will of courfe bring away with him no other collection than what is afforded him by chance.

At the Cape are daily proofs of what I have faid. That colonies have long ago been vifited by amateurs of flowers and kilful botanists; yet every new comer finds fomething with which to enrich his garden or his herbal. As it happens, perhaps, that no one arrives at the fame place, under the fame circumftances, and at the fame period as another, each meets with plants which they who preceded him neither knew nor had the power of knowing. The two naturalifts. I mentioned above have enriched science by new difcoveries, though they came after fo many others.

Though the majority of thefe fucceffive journeys were made in a fhort fpace of time, they have contributed nevertheless to extend our knowledge, and increase the treafures of natural history. What then would be effected, should a man of information repair to fome fertile and more diftant fpot, and remain a whole year, fo as to fee all that nature produces there blow in fucceffion under his eye!

This accidental and tranfitory diffimilitude is fometimes fo great, that a perfon would fuppofe himself to fee individuals totally different; and I have known men learned in books and fyftems as much deceived in this refpect as others, One of thefe clofet naturalifts, for inftance, fhewed me four birds as fo many different fpecies, and even as not belonging to the fame genus, with which I was well acquainted, and which I knew to be the fame bird, only of different ages.

In the first place, every male when young has the fame plumage as his mother; and it is only as he grows older that he affumes that of his sex. I will not venture to affirm that this is an univerfal and invariable rule; but I have hitherto met with no exception to it, whereas I have verified it, by my own obfervation, in more than a thousand different fpecies.

Many females too, when they grow fo old as to ceafe laying eggs, undergo a fimilar change, and affume the more fplendid colours belonging to the male of the fpecies, which they retain during the remainder of their lives. This fact is ftrikingly perceptible in those species in which the male and female very much differ in their colour; as the golden pheafant of China, for inftance, now fo common in our aviaries, in which the change takes place. I have observed the fame transmutation in many other birds, of which I shall speak elfewhere. In fome fpecies, and those not few in number, the male alone regularly changes his colour, and asfumes once in a twelvemonth the plumage of the female; fo that at a certain period of the year all the birds of this fpecies appear to be females. I have in my poffeffion fpecimens of more than fifty of these changing fpecies, in all their tranfitions from one hue to another; but the one in which it appears most extraor

dinary is an African bunting, known by the name of veuve à épaulettes rougës *.

The female of this beautiful bird has the fimple colours of the skylark, and a fhort horizontal tail, like that of almost all other birds: the male, on the contrary, is wholly black, except at the fhoulder of the wing; where there is a large red patch; and his tail is long, ample, and vertical, like that of the common cock. But this brilliant plumage and fine vertical tail fubfift only during the feason of love, which continues fix months. This period over, he lays afide his fplendid habiliments, and affames the more modeft dress of his mate. The moft extraordinary circumftance is, that the vertical tail alfo changes to a horizontal one, and the male fo exactly resembles the female, that it is not poffible to diftinguish them from each other.

The female has her turn. When the reaches a certain age, and has loft the faculty of propagating the fpecies, the clothes herself for the remainder of her days in the garb which

the male had temporarily affumed; her tail, like his at that period, grows long, and, like his alfo, from horizontal becomes vertical.

The birds of this fpecies affociate together, live in a fort of republic, and build their nefts near to each other. The fociety ufually consists of about fourfcore females: but whether, by a particular law of nature, more females are produced than males, or for any other reafon of which I am ignorant, there are never more than twelve or fifteen males to this number of females, who have them in common.

All that I have here written I have read in the great book of nature. Such obfervations, perhaps, have no great merit, and I confider them myself as of little value: but they are at least accurate; and the critics who have been defirous of giving me their advice have neither found, nor will be able to find, fimilar ones, either among their inventors of fyftems, or in the books of writers whofe excurfions have never extended beyond the walls of a closet.

CRAYON Pictures are in their

nature more delicate, and confequently more liable to injury, than almost every other kind of painting: they are ufually executed upon a paper ground, pafted over the fineft limen, and are often painted upon blue, but most commonly upon paper prepared with a fize ground, rendered of a middle teint for the fake of expedition, and fometimes upon paper

perfectly white. It must not be con

cluded, that because Crayon pictures are easily injured, they cannot with care be preferved a great length of time; nay, for many centuries; but it will always be necessary to keep them with attention, and above all things to take care that they are not left in damp rooms, or in moist places, for the paste which is used in preparing the grounds, will inevit

ably

"She had no foul to lofe or fave, yet her I loved to fee;

"Each morn fhe did my humble cot attend,

"She was my kind companion, and my filent friend,"

"To the Memory of a Hare, killed by Mr Anfon's hounds after a chace of three hours.'

I then entered the old man's dwelling, which was about half the fize of your inner parlour, and in which a little turf on the hearth, a few religious books, and a miferable bed, were the only objects that drew my attention. I next attended him fomewhat lower down the hill, where he fhowed me a cavity neatly bricked by his own hands, and of the dimenfions of a human body: this, fays he, is to be my grave, and I have a friend who, if he furvives me, will depofit my remains here. Laft of all, I peeped over a broom hedge into his garden, where the cabbages and potatoes would have been more plentiful, if the hares and the rabbits had been lefs fo. I now began to have leifure to contemplate the extraordinary inhabitant of thefe dreary fcenes, and found him courteous, intelligent, and contented. I have fpent twelve years, fays he, in this place; in which nothing has difturbed my religious peace, unlefs indeed it was the death of that hare, which vifited me conftantly with the utmost familiarity, and whofe lofs this noify cur by my fide does but ill fupply-I have been afked for my beard; but I feek not fingularity for its own fake, and wifh to drefs, as far as I can, like other folks of my age and circumftances. I walk three miles to church every Sunday, when I am prevented neither by illness nor weather; in thefe cafes I ferve God at home, and can do it as well: I have been richer than now, but neither happier, nor more independent; as I often dine on bread and water fweetened with a little fugar, with perfect fatisfaction.

-I drink beer however, and ale too when I can get it; and fometimes have brought a bottle of it in my hand from the town to my cottage; but there are no means of conveying any quantity hither; and I will not go there to feek it. If I quit this retreat, I must go into a workhouse, which I diflike; here I am quite contented with what you have brought me from your charitable female friend, I have feventeen fhillings, and have no farther anxiety for the winter: once I was here three whole days furrounded with fnow, and unable to ftir five yards from my dwelling; but I had bacon which had been fent me by a friend; I had potatoes, and I had fnow water to drink; and I had a mind perfectly at rest. So far for the worthy Hermit, about whom all I have faid is exactly true, only that the real fpeech was probably not worded in the fame manner, and was interrupted by occafional queftions from me.

Further particulars of the faid Hermit. I was on a week's tour, with Mr and Mrs one of her fifters, and a gentleman, when we heard of this curious and venerable character. It is near Wolfely-bridge, in Staffordfhire, and about fourteen miles from Mr. -, that the foreft is fituated; and though my curiofity was much raised by the name of a Hermit, I do not think I fhould have gone out of my way for farther information about him, had I not been ftimulated to it by one of my fair companions, Miss

,who being informed by the Landlord that the parish had withdrawn their weekly allowance to him, in confequence of having builded an ample poor house, to which he was at liberty to betake himself; and that therefore, his main dependence being removed, his fituation must become more precarious, perfuaded me to rife half an hour before the rest of the party, to carry him a prefent from

her;