between
stems of plants, while the lighter stripes represent streaks of light
passing through foliage. When young birds live in the open, as on
shingly beaches, then their down is mottled. How perfectly this
harmonises with the surrounding stones only those who have tried to find
young terns (fig. 4), or young ringed plover (fig. 2), for example, can
tell. But this question of young birds is a big one, and must be taken
up again on some future occasion.

W. P. PYCRAFT, F.Z.S., A.L.S.

DR. JOHNSON'S BAD MANNERS.

When Dr. Johnson visited Scotland, he was taken, on his arrival at St.
Andrews, to see the ruins of the castle there. He was sorry to find the
grand old building, like many he had already visited, in ruins, and in
his disappointment he was very rude and overbearing to those who were
guiding him. One of the guides ventured to ask him if he had been
disappointed in his visit to Scotland.

'Sir,' replied the doctor, 'I came to see savage men and savage manners,
and I have not been disappointed.'

'Yes,' replied the Scotchman, 'and we came to meet a man without manners
of any kind, and we have not been disappointed.'

OLD SARUM.

'Can you tell me the way to Old Sarum?' said a tourist, who was roaming
over Salisbury Plain, to a country yokel he came across.

'What!' answered the rustic, 'old Sarah! she be dead last year!' Being
somewhat deaf, he thought the stranger was asking after a cottager, who
had been well known in that part. The site of this old city was not
easily to be found on Salisbury Plain. Where the ancient Sarum once
stood, grew a field of oats, and the rougher ground was pasture-land,
dotted over with remnants of walls and heaps of rubbish. Sarum was a
city of the tribe called the Bilgae; it existed before the Romans visited
England; it stood in a high and dry part of the large Wiltshire plain,
and the Romans seized it as a capital military position.

Many of those curious remains or tombs are near. They have had the name
of 'barrow' given to them, and in them are discovered, besides bones,
old weapons, jewels, pottery, and other objects. At no great distance is
the Druids' temple of Stonehenge, and the still more remarkable one of
Abury, of which but fragments are left, though it must have been far
grander than Stonehenge. The Saxon King, Egbert, lived chiefly at Old
Sarum, as did several other kings, and in 960 Edgar held a national
council in the city, to consider the bes