The following spring two swallows, worn down by fatigue, came to take possession of the nest. Cuvier recognized them immediately; they were the very same--those whose manners and habits he had studied the preceding year. They proceeded to restore the nest, cracked and injured in some places by the frost: they garnished anew the inside with fresh feathers and choice moss, then, as last year, made an excursion of some days. On the very morrow after their return, while they were darting to and fro close to Cuvier's window, to whose presence they had become accustomed, and which did not in the least incommode them, a screech-owl, that seemed to fall from above, pounced upon the male, seized him in his talons, and was already bearing him away, when Cuvier took down his gun, which was within reach, primed and cocked it, and fired at the owl; the fellow, mortally wounded, fell head over heels into the garden, and Cuvier hastened to deliver the swallow from the claws of the dead owl, who still held him with his formidable nails. The poor swallow had received some deep wounds; the nails of the owl had penetrated deeply into his side, and one of the drops of shot had broken his leg. Cuvier dressed the wounds as well as he could, and, by the aid of a ladder, replaced the invalid in his nest, while the female flew sadly around it, uttering cries of despair. For three or four days she never left the nest but to go in search of food, which she offered the male. Cuvier saw his sickly head come out with difficulty, and try in vain to take the food offered by his companion; every day he appeared to get weaker. At length, one morning, Cuvier was awakened by the cries of the female, who with her wings beat against the panes of his window. He ran to the nest--alas! it contained only a dead body. From that fatal moment the female never left her nest. Overwhelmed with grief, she, five days after, died of despair, on the dead body of her companion. Some months after this, the Abbe Tessier, whom the revolutionary persecution had compelled to flee to Normandy, where he disguised himself under the dress of a military physician of the hospital of Fecamp, fell in with the obscure tutor, who recounted to him the history of the swallows. The abbe engaged him to deliver a course of lectures on natural history to the pupils of that hospital, of which he was the head, and wrote to Jussieu and Geoffrey Saint Hilaire, to inform them of the individual he had become acquainted with. Cuvier entered into a correspondence with these two learned men, and a short time after he was elected to the chair of comparative anatomy at Paris His subsequent career is well known. [From Hunting Adventures in South Africa.] A GIRAFFE CHASE.