the game was up--that is, that an owl was up a tree. This was scurvy
treatment for the visitors. To "put a head on" an owl, which is already
provided with one so large and so comical, appears to be a work both
superfluous and inhuman. The only apology for it in this instance is,
that these night-birds of prey were supposed by the police to have been
attracted to the parks by the prospect of succulent suppers on the very
well-fed sparrows by which these resorts are now thickly tenanted. The
owls hooted at this notion; but their hooting was only answered by
shooting, and the poor foolish Birds of Wisdom have been stuffed with
tow instead of sparrows, and set up to form the nucleus of an
ornithological Rogues' Gallery in the City Hall.

On visiting the Battery a few days ago, one of the park-keepers (himself
looking in his bright new uniform somewhat like a blue-jay) expressed
his conviction that, next spring, that time-honored pleasure-garden of
the old Knickerbockers will be a paradise for song-birds such as it has
not been since the original Swedish Nightingale warbled her "woodnotes
wild" there a score of years ago, more or less. The sea-gulls, he
thought (will Judge HILTON have the goodness to provide these park
officers with manuals of ornithology?), would build their nests in the
pine-trees with which the wide esplanade that stretches away to the
water's edge will soon be bristling. Honest, but mistaken young man! As
well might he have said that the sea-wall [a very substantial one, by
the way] would build its nest in the melancholy pines. But it is
reasonable to hope that pine grossbeaks will find their way thither, and
that the German flutes of various finches will provide for the coming
Bavarians and Hessians (should any be left after the siege of Paris and
the _sorties_ of the truculent TROCHU) a welcome such as has not
heretofore been accorded to the strangers who at Castle Garden first set
foot upon our shore.