hours from London.

The only public place we have yet visited is the Acclimatization
Garden; which is very beautifully laid out, and full of aviaries,
though it looks strange to see common English birds treated as
distinguished visitors and sumptuously lodged and cared for.
Naturally, the Australian ones interest me most, and they are
certainly prettier than yours at home, though they do not sing. I
have been already to a shop where they sell skins of birds, and have
half ruined myself in purchases for hats. You are to have a
"diamond sparrow," a dear little fellow with reddish brown plumage,
and white spots over its body (in this respect a miniature copy of
the Argus pheasant I brought from India), and a triangular patch of
bright yellow under its throat. I saw some of them alive in a cage
in the market with many other kinds of small birds, and several
pairs of those pretty grass or zebra paroquets, which are called
here by the very inharmonious name of "budgerighars." I admired the
blue wren so much--a tiny _birdeen_ with tail and body of
dust-coloured feathers, and head and throat of a most lovely
turquoise blue; it has also a little wattle of these blue feathers
standing straight out on each side of its head, which gives it a
very pert appearance. Then there is the emu-wren, all sad-coloured,
but quaint, with the tail-feathers sticking up on end, and exactly
like those of an emu; on the very smallest scale, even to the
peculiarity of two feathers growing out of the same little quill. I
was much amused by the varieties of cockatoos, parrots, and lories
of every kind and colour, shrieking and jabbering in the part of the
market devoted to them; but I am told that I have seen very few of
the varieties of birds, as it is early in the spring, and the young
ones have not yet been brought in: they appear to sell as fast as