The Bowling Green--late a nuisance and a pandemonium, now an oasis of
verdure--has not as yet reported its owl, but the public eye is upon it,
and the nocturnal marauder may yet be detected in the forks of the great
willow-trees, which still retain their verdure. The sparrows are almost
disproportionately numerous in this small park, but this may be
accounted for. It has lately been laid down with new grass, the green,
tender blades of which, just now beginning to crop out, are probably
mistaken by the birds for "sparrow-grass" munificently provided for them
by the Commissioners.

In all of these city parks the contrast between past and present is very
striking and agreeable. But a few short months ago they were the
domiciles and dormitories of outcast roughs and vagrants of the worst
description, whose "'owls," as a Cockney explorer observed, "made night
'ideous." The only muss now common to them is the _mus_ tribe,
comprising the _mus ratus_, or ordinary rat (so called from its haunting
ordinaries, we suppose), and the timid mouse, with which the Bird of
Wisdom is contented to put up when the sparrows decline to come to his
claw.

Central Park offers numerous attractions now to all who love to keep up
their animal spirits by studying animal life. There is a fat little
Asiatic pig there, who is the very picture of content. A red pig he is,
and exceedingly well behaved. The best red pig, in fact, that we
remember ever to have seen, beating the learned pig by several trumps
and an ace. When we last saw him he was very busy with his pen, and our
surmise was that his mind was fully occupied with arrangements for
editing the works of BACON, or, possibly, those of HOGG.