The destruction of these woods is of comparatively recent date. Cambrensis, who accompanied Henry II. into Ireland in the twelfth century, notices the enormous quantities of woods everywhere existing. But their extirpation soon began with the gradual rise of English supremacy in the land, the object in view being mainly to increase the amount or arable land, to deprive the natives of shelter, to provide fuel, and to open out the country for military purposes. So anxious were the new landlords to destroy the forests that many old leases contain clauses coercing tenants to use no other fuel. Many old trees were cut down and sold for twelve cents. On a single estate in Kerry, after the revolution of 1688, trees were cut down of the value of $100,000. A paper laid before the Irish houses of parliament describes the immense quantity of timber that in the last years of the seventeenth century was shipped from ports in Ulster, and how the great woods in that province (290,000 trees in all) were almost destroyed. The houses passed an act for the planting of 250,000 trees, but it was of no avail, and so denuded of timber had the country become that large works started in Elizabeth's reign for the smelting of iron were obliged to be stopped at last for want of charcoal. The present century has continued the deplorable story of destruction. In forty years, from 1841 to 1881, 45,000 acres of timber were cut down and sold. Every landlord cut down, scarcely anyone planted, so that at the present day there is hardly an eightieth part of Ireland's surface under timber. BIRDS AND REPTILES RELATED. Fossil remains have been found of birds with teeth and long bony tails, and also of reptiles, with wings; great monsters they must have been--veritable flying dragons. In 1861, in the lithographic slates of Solenhofen, Bavaria, a fossil feather was found which was the subject of considerable discussion among naturalists. Again, in 1862, a curious skeleton was disinterred from the same place, in which most of the bones exhibited the marks of a true bird, but the skeleton had a most remarkable tail, containing twenty distinct bones. From each of these bones proceeded a pair of well-developed feathers, similar to the single feather which had been previously found. Here was an animal which could be called a birdlike reptile or a lizardlike bird, with equal propriety. Its twenty caudal segments or vertebræ were a bar to its entrance to every existing family of birds, while it was equally out of place among reptiles. [Illustration: SHELLS Reduced 1/10. FROM COL. CHI. ACAD. SCIENCES. A. W. MUMFORD, PUBLISHER, CHICAGO. COPYRIGHT 1900, BY NATURE STUDY PUB. CO., CHICAGO