liar habits of the various animals of the country in which they are found. The toucan, like the woodpecker, makes its nest in the holes of trees, and is peculiarly liable to be attacked in its person, and robbed of its eggs, by mischievous and thievish monkeys. Its beak is a formidable defensive weapon, and it knows right well how to use it. And not merely for defense, for the toucan is, in his sphere, a bird of prey. He relishes all kinds of fruits and the eggs of other birds; but when an opportunity offers, he has no hesitation in dining upon flesh. Of one in a state of captivity, it is said that a goldfinch was introduced into his cage. The toucan seized it in a moment, and the poor little songster had only time to utter a short squeak before it was dead, with its bowels protruding. The toucan then hopped with it to another perch, and began to strip off its feathers. When it was nearly naked it broke the bones of the wings and legs, taking them in its bill, and giving them a strong lateral wrench. Having reduced the little victim to a shapeless mass, it first swallowed the viscera, and then the remaining parts, piece after piece, not even rejecting the wings and bill.

and the toucan seemed ready to dart at its prey, if the bars of its cage permitted its approach.

Of a toucan kept in a state of domestication many years, its owner has given some interesting particulars. Being found to thrive well on a vegetable diet, it was not allowed to indulge its appetite for animal food. It delighted in fruit of all kinds. During the period when these were fresh, it fed almost exclusively on them. Even in winter it exhibited great gratification in being offered pieces of apples, oranges, or preserved fruits of any kind. These it generally held, for a short time, at the extremity of its bill, touching them with apparent delight with its slender and feathered tongue, and then conveying them by a sudden jerk to its throat, where they were caught and instantly swallowed. Its natural propensity to prey upon animals, though not indulged, was still strongly conspicuous. When another bird approached its cage, or even a skin, or preserved specimen, was presented to it, considerable excitement was exhibited. It raised itself up, erected its feathers, and uttered the hollow, clattering sound which seems to be the usual expression of delight of these birds; at the same time the irides of the eyes expanded, VOL. VIII.-35

Our engraving (No. 36) is a very lifelike delineation of the Double-collared Toucan, (the Pteroglossus bitorquatus of some naturalists,) and gives a very good idea of the striking peculiarities of this most singular tribe.

IS IT COME?

Is it come? they said on the banks of the Nile Who look'd for the world's long-promised day,

And saw but the strife of Egypt's toil

With the desert's sands and the granite gray.

From the pyramid, temple, and treasured dead
We vainly ask for her wisdom's plan;
They tell of the slave and tyrant's dread-
Yet there was hope when that day began.

The Chaldee came with his starry lore,

That built up Babylon's crown and creed: And bricks were stamp'd on the Tigris' shore

With signs which our sages scarce can read. From Ninus' Temple and Nimrod's Tower

The rule of the old East's empire spread Unreasoning faith and unquestion'd power

But still, Is it come? the Watcher said.

The light of the Persian's worship'd flame

The ancient bondage its splendor threw ; And once on the West a sunrise came,

When Greece to her freedom's trust was true. With dreams to the utmost ages dear,

With human gods and with godlike men,

No marvel the far-off day seem'd near

To eyes that look'd through her laurels then.

The Romans conquer'd and revel'd, too,

Till honor, and faith, and power were gone, And deeper old Europe's darkness grew

As wave after wave the Goth came on: The gown was learning, the sword was law,

The people served in the oxen's stead, But ever some gleam the Watcher saw,

And evermore, Is it come? they said.

Poet and seer that question caught

Above the din of life's fears and frets;
It march'd with letters-it toil'd with thought
Through schools and creeds which the earth
forgets;

And statesmen trifle, and priests deceive,
And traders barter our world away;
Yet hearts to that golden promise cleave,
And still, at times, Is it come? they say.

The days of the nation bear no trace

Of all the sunshine so far foretold; The cannon speaks in the teacher's placeThe age is weary with work and gold; And higher hopes wither and memories waneOn hearths and altars the fires are dead; But that brave faith hath not lived in vain ; And this is all that our Watcher said.

A

BOUT four o'clock,

one November morning, there was an unusual stir at Shepherd's, the Oriental Transit Company's hotel, in Grand Cairo. Sleepy Arab servants were rattling upon the doors of certain travelers, who, in conclave the previous evening, on the cool porch below, had determined upon a trip to the Pyramids, and bustling dragomen were filling baskets with cold joints, fowls, and the like, from the flesh - pots of Egypt. In front of the hotel, the head - quarters of Napoleon in Cairo, had already collected a group of donkey-boys with their donkeys, the former being busily engaged in their usual morning exercise of Arabic slang, interspersed with blows. This terrain, O reader! is the theater of a perpetual conflict between the donkey-boys and the imp of a Nubian janitor. When the former approach too near the portal of the hotel, in the hope of tripp

ing up pedestrians, and compelling them to take donkeys-for men and women, pachas and beggars, are donkeyed through the streets of Grand Cairo-he of the long whip and shuffling babouche, sallies forth, and puts to flight the nimble quadrupeds and boys. The long-eared host, however, soon assembles for another repulse, to return again almost upon the heels of their Nubian persecutor. Many a laugh does the howadji enjoy, as, seated on the porch of Shepherd's, and realizing the seventh heaven of Latakieh, (O Elysium of eastern memory!) he looks down upon this ever-varying conflict, and, should his imagination be sufficiently vivid, sees in it

PALM TREES.

a continuation of the fabled combat of Typhon and Osiris.

Scarcely a richer tableau of nationalities could be presented than that exhibited when the Arab servants had succeeded in bringing together the members of the expedition to the Pyramids. A German philosoph, a French savan, and two or three American travelers per se, as might have been judged from their cosmopolitan air and conversation, formed the more characteristic part of the company. There were also three merchants from Canton, and a couple of superannuated majors of the Company's service-men with veins shriveled, and livers enlarged under a tropical Though of Anglo-Saxon origin,

sun.

Carlton & Phillips, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the Southern District of New-York.

fore we set out desired Ibrahim not to forget the fluid known in the East as French water, designed in this particular instance to counteract the calorific influences of the desert. The complement consisted of several young men, on their way out to assist in shaking the rupee trees of India, delayed accidentally a few days in Egypt, and giving us thereby the inestimable treasure of their company and stunning conversation. "A cheval," at last shouted Ibrahim, the prince of Caireen dragomen, but whose imperfect knowledge of the French idiom had led him to confound the equine and asinine races. The company mounted, and amid the shouts of the donkey-men, and the flourish of their batons, set off on a gallop for the city gate.

Except for those who have the password, the janitor does not turn the ponderous key until Phoebus whirls his flaming chariot above the Arabian desert. With that magical word we were not provided. Backsheesh was tried; backsheesh, which here accomplishes miracles; which introduces the howadji to pachas and princes; opens the doors and hearts of all, and even unvails the face of beauty; but in vain. We waited, much like foolish virgins, until Ibrahim returned, when, at a single word from him, the bolts flew back, as if by magic, and the party, issuing through the gate, galloped away in the direction of Masr-elAtikeh, some three miles distant up the Nile. The road, lined on either side with tall hedges of cactus, runs through the extensive "Gardens" of Ibrahim Pacha, the forced result of Fellah labor, at one piaster per day. The fields of sugar-cane were interspersed with groves of the ailanthus, acacia, and Indian fire tree. The Nile lay, like a sleeping serpent, beneath the tufted palms in the distance; and as the morning breeze crept softly and slowly up the

valley, wafting along the breath of flowers and the song of birds, the stately trees did gently bow to each other, and their myriad leaves shake hands and whisper in the general jubilee of awakening morn.

Never did Aurora's fingers tinge the east with a finer flush than on the morning we left Cairo. It was as if an angel of light had been hastening to embrace the dewy earth, and she, awakening with her myriad eyes of flowers, had smiled, and blushed, and wept at his royal coming.

At our right lay Boulak, the port of Cairo. I also noticed the dim outlines of several large conical elevations, which, on my arrival at Cairo, I had taken to be hills, but afterward discovered to be mountains of government grain, gathered in from the villages along the Nile, and thus exposed to the influences of the heavens, as also to the inroads of innumerable graineating birds.

We reached Masr-el-Atikeh, or Old Cairo, just as the muezzin ascended the minaret of the ancient mosque, and chanted thrice, "There is but one God, and Mohammed is his prophet. Arise, ye faithful, and pray: prayer is better

A BOAT ON THE NILE.

than sleep." The immense mounds of rubbish indicated that we were standing on the site of a once flourishing city. Near at hand were the colossal remains of an ancient Roman fortress. and the many-columned ruins of the oldest mosque of the caliphs in Egypt.

The dwellings of the plebeian multitude, the pulses of whose life once throbbed along the Nile, had passed away. The pious Moslems, like the ancient Egyptians, reserve marble and granite for the habitations of God, and leave to mortal man mere cabins of wood and clay, no more enduring than himself. Within the somber walls of an adjacent convent the guides point out a spring from which the Holy Family is said to have drunk while in Egypt; and to the Mussulman Téké, near at hand, travelers repair, on certain days, to witness the Zirs of the whirling Dervishes, performances which procure piasters for those pious devotees, if they do not contribute to the praises of Allah.

At Masr-el-Atikeh commences the lofty aqueduct, which conveys the water of the Nile to Joseph's well, in the citadel of Cairo. In a characteristic story concerning the same, it is related that the architect constructed the winding stairway too narrow for the passage of the oxen designed to raise the water. To remedy this mistake several calves were taken up; but in what manner the water was elevated until the bovines came to maturity, we are not informed.

In the meantime Ibrahim had chartered a couple of boats to convey to Ghizeh, on the opposite side of the Nile. The élite of the party, namely, travelers and dragomen, occupied one; into the other crowded, promiscuously, donkeys and the adjuvant donkey-boys. The The immense sails, resembling the wings of a bird, were given to the morning breeze, and, amid the shouts of the Arab boatmen, our primitive craft slowly crossed the Nile, at that point more than one third of a mile in width. We passed a short distance above the Island of Rhoda, where the day previous I had visited the Nilometer, and plucked a few roses on the spot where tradition says the infant Moses was found by the daughter of Pharaoh. At the height of the inundations the water now rises entirely above the Nilometer. An accumulation of centuries has elevated the bed of the river, and, in fact, the entire

surface of the valley, several feet, the deposited strata of Nilotic earth having kept pace with the expiring strata of Egyptian civilization.

Ghizeh, on the left bank of the Nile, is a place of far less importance than in former times. It is, in fact, merely a large Arab village, but illustrates well the type of the Oriental city-streets narrow, crooked, and unnamed; a multitude of unnumbered houses, (mud hovels in Egypt,) interspersed with a few more imposing edifices, as mosques, caravansaries, and tombs.

The few moments to be spared, before the donkeys could be landed, were spent in visiting one of the numerous chickenhatching establishments, which have existed in Egypt from the earliest times. A government chaooshe-for even the hatching of chickens is a royal monopoly in the land of the Pharaohs-conducted us into a low building, with clay walls, whose mephitic rooms and passages were kept at the proper temperature by a manure fire. The eggs, of which there must have been at least one hundred thousand, were arranged in strata upon shelves. For a hundred eggs brought in, the Fellah receives fifty newly-hatched chickens, leaving, consequently, a large margin for expenses, accidents, and the piasters accruing to the pacha's treasury. Bad eggs are quickly detected by the cunning divinities of these places, and cast out. It was interesting to watch the myriads of ovules bursting into life, and to step from stone to stone over a sea of unbrooded chicks.

As far as incubation is concerned, a vast amount of sedentary labor is dispensed with, or, rather, is diverted into an active and more productive channel. The eggs of Egypt appear to be as infinite in number as they are infinitesimal in size. Poultry is abundant and cheap; but it struck me as singular that chickens should be sold by measure, when eggs, dates, and pomegranates are sold by weight. Tant des pays, tant des Moeres. The quality, however, is very inferior, and, like Hadrian, I can wish the Egyptians no greater evil than to be compelled to eat their own chickens, hatched in a manner that the Roman emperor was ashamed to describe.

"Eggs are hatched by the incubation of birds," says Aristotle, "but they are also hatched spontaneously by being