expression of deep personal concern upon his dark countenance. Its progress seemed to satisfy him and at the proper time he took off the clay cast. The leg seemed as good as ever, though a little stiff, but I could never get Jim to jump over the string again. He seemed afraid of it and shared the same fear regarding anything white. Waving my handkerchief at him would frequently drive him away from me for hours together, and thus I gained time to write, and to put down in my observation ledger priceless records, made on the spot, of the great and glorious panorama of wild life which was passing under my gifted eyes.Naturally, I was proud of my pet. When I returned to the city, however, and resumed my researches in the library, I learned that this method of setting a fractured limb was well known among the Birds. One of the new books on Natural History described at great length the setting of a Woodcock’s leg by the same means, the operation having taken place under the writer’s own eyes. The only difference was that the Woodcock used no crutch. I learned, further, that hunters often shot Woodcock, Grouse, Snipe, and Quail who had been repaired in the same way. To many of these Birds remnants of the clay casts still clung; others bore only slight evidences of the fracture, which, in knitting, became perfectly smooth.

Every one knows how a Chicken’s leg is sometimes broken, and, in healing, is twisted to one side. This, of course, refers to very young Chickens. I have seldom had one on my own plate whose leg could have been broken by anything short of a butcher’s cleaver. The legs of fliers and the wings of walkers are choice morsels, but of the legs of walkers and the wings of fliers, the less said the better, and the more polite when at the table.

To return, not to our mutton, as the French have it, but to our Crow, as the politicians say.

Jim had a great many friends among his own race, and after they learned not to be afraid of me, they used to call upon him at stated intervals. Often I have gone out in the morning and found my dooryard black with Crows holding a caucus. Some Unnaturalists have it that every Crow is an independent caucus, but I am not prepared to make any positive statements on this point.

It was by watching these assemblies that I learned the Crow language. Every student of Natural History admits that Crows have a way of talking to each other and making themselves understood. It has remained for me, however, to tabulate these utterances in suitable lists, and by the same method pursued by Champollion with the Rosetta Stone, together with 

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