If we pursue our walk down the broad path which skirts the paddocks enclosing the deer and llamas, we cannot help being struck with the fact that the finest half of the gardens--that which is open to the setting sun--is not yet built on, whilst the more exposed portion is inconveniently crowded. The reason is, that the Commissioners of the Woods and Forests will not allow any permanent buildings to be erected on these parts, for what cause we cannot tell. We trust the prohibition will be withdrawn, and that we shall see constructed here an enclosed exercising-ground for the poor confined inhabitants of the terrace-dens. At the northern extremity of the path we have been following we come upon the paddock and pool dedicated to cranes and storks. What spectre birds have we got among? See yonder, on the very edge of the pool, the gaunt adjutant, his head muffled up in his shoulders, looking like some traveller attempting to keep his nose warm in the east wind. They say every man has his likeness among the lower animals, and we have seen plenty of adjutants waiting on a winter's night for the last omnibus. What an elegant gentleman seems the Stanley crane beside him! There is as much difference between the two as between a young guardsman in full dress at the opera and the night cabman huddled up in the multitudinous capes of his great-coat. A third claimant for our admiration steps forward like a dancing-master, now bending low, now with the aid of his wings lifting himself on the light fantastic toe, now advancing, now poussetting, and all the time calling attention to his grotesque but not altogether inelegant attitudes by a peculiar cry. We defy the gravest spectator to watch the beautiful crowned crane at his antics without laughing. But we hear the lady beside us exclaiming, "Is it possible that the Maraboo feathers which so often gracefully sway in obeisance before the queen, were ever portions of such ugly birds as these?" Unlikely as it may seem, it is verily from these dirty ill-favoured looking Maraboo storks that this fashionable plumage is procured. Close by, sitting upon a stone, we see the melancholy-looking heron, and the audacious sparrows hop within a foot of his legs, so inanimate he seems. Ah! it is the vile deceit of the bird: in an instant he has stricken the intruder with his bill, and the next the sparrow has disappeared down his throat. That elegant grey crane is the "native companion" from Australia, so called from his love of consorting with man in that country. We all know what familiars cranes and storks are in Holland and the East, where they build on the chimney-pots without the slightest fear; and we are glad to find that they possess the same confidence in the savages of the New World. They are handsome birds, but not richly plumed as the European crane, with his black and white feathers and full-clustered tail. Once these cranes were common here, when