RARE ARCTIC BIRDS.THE WHITE-HORNED OWLTHE COCK OF THE PLAINSLEGS AND FEET OF THE MOUNTAIN GROUSE.Few of the results of recent expeditions of discovery have been so interesting to the public as their contributions to zoological history. Many important additions to geographical science have also been made by these journeys into countries hitherto unexplored, or but imperfectly known by Europeans; but the... more...

CASCADE AT VIRGINIA WATER. This has been described as "perhaps the most striking imitation we have of the great works of nature:" at all events, it has less of the mimicry of art than similar works on a smaller scale. Virginia Water will be recollected as the largest sheet of artificial water in the kingdom, with the exception of that at Blenheim. Near the high Southampton road it forms the... more...

December 23, 1914. An exceptionally well-informed Berlin newspaper has discovered that, owing to the war, Ireland is suffering from a horse famine, and many of the natives are now to be seen driving cattle. An appeal is being made in Germany for cat-skins for the troops. In their Navy, on the other hand, they often get the cat itself. In offering congratulations to the "Green Howards" on the... more...

It was a terrific storm. The wind swept down the river, raising a ridge of white water in its path. The rain came down harder, so the boys thought, than they had ever seen it come down before, and the glare of the lightning and the crash of the thunder were frightful. "What luck it is that we got the tent pitched in time!" exclaimed Joe. "We're as dry and comfortable here as if we were... more...

The story which I have to tell is more than strange. It is so terrible, so incredible, so entirely contrary to all that any ordinary reader of the London Journal or the "penny dreadfuls" has ever heard of, that even now I have some doubt in telling it. I happen, however, to know it is true, and so does my husband. My husband will come in presently with his narrative. There! that ought to make... more...

CHAPTER XXII. MR. MADGIN AT THE HELM. Mr. Madgin's house stood somewhat back from the main street of Eastbury. It was an old-fashioned house, of modest exterior, and had an air of being elbowed into the background by the smarter and more modern domiciles on each side of it. Its steep, overhanging roof and porched doorway gave it a sleepy, reposeful look, as though it were watching the on-goings of... more...

CHAPTER I. Every one who knows Oxford, and a good many besides, must have heard of certain periodical migrations of the younger members of that learned university into distant and retired parts of her Majesty’s dominions, which (on the “lucus a non lucendo” principle) are called and known by the name of Reading Parties. Some half-dozen undergraduates, in peril of the coming examination, form... more...

CANCEL, OR RECALL. The World last week sounded a note about the compulsory retirement, by reason of age, from one of the large Revenue Departments, of a gentleman who has the great honour to be the son of "the most distinguished Irishman of this century." If this sentence has really been passed authoritatively, which Mr. Punch takes leave to doubt, then said "Authority" will do well to... more...

SLAVE SOCIETY ON THE SOUTHERN PLANTATION In the year 1619, memorable in the history of the United States, a Dutch trading vessel carried to the colonists of Virginia twenty Negroes from the West Indies and sold them as slaves, thus laying the foundation of slave society in the American colonies. In the seventeenth century slavery made but little progress in these parts of America, and during that whole... more...

In my third and fourth letters on American finances and resources, the following comparisons were instituted: Massachusetts and New Jersey, Free States, with Maryland and South Carolina, Slave States; New York and Pennsylvania, Free States, with Virginia, Slave State; Rhode Island, Free State, with Delaware, Slave State; Illinois, Free State, with Missouri, Slave State; the Free States of 1790, with... more...