On our return to the village the men were coming in and emptying their baskets onto a long table in the middle of the Englishman’s hut. Many of the birds were of the most brilliant plumage; but there were hundreds of birds, not boasting any brightness of color, that were of no use. The slaughter, in fact, is much greater in regard to the birds that are not wanted than those which reach the English market. The collector, stripped to the shirt, and with his sleeves rolled up, set to work at once, going through the game. He handled every bird, dropping those pretty enough for a bonnet or valuable enough for a collection into one heap, and the useless ones into another. Not more than one bird in ten was retained; the rest had been slaughtered uselessly. When I reproached my friend with this wanton waste of feathered life, he replied that he could not attempt to kill the birds himself, and it was impossible to get Indians to discriminate between valuable and worthless specimens. JOKES FROM JERROLD. Douglas Jerrold, once the keenest of wits, a remarkable combination of Thackeray and Hood, is now almost forgotten. It is a pity. His jests were singularly ripe and racy. He had no mercy on the sentimentalists. “I love nature,” said one of these dawdles to him one day. “I often take a book, retire into some unfrequented field, lie down, gaze on the heavens, then study. If there are any animals in the field, so much the better. The cow approaches, and looks down upon me; and I--I look up to her.” “Exactly,” said Jerrold, “you look up to her with a filial smile!” A delightful way of telling him he was a calf. Another sentimentalist got a beautiful settler in this way: Walking in the country, Jerrold and a small party of friends stopped to notice the antics of a small donkey in a field. A gushing poet in the party said: “Dear little thing; how I should like to buy it and give it to my mother!” “Do,” said Jerrold--“do, and tie this sweet motto round its neck: ‘When this you see, remember me.’” He had little mercy for pretentious prigs, who always abound in “literary circles.” A young author had written on the same subject as Lamartine, and bragged of it. “Ah,” said he, “Lamartine and I row in the same boat.” “Yes,” said Jerrold, “but not with the same skulls.” Another of these gentry, praising one of his own plays, said to Jerrold: “Do you remember the baroness in that play?” “Oh, yes,” said Jerrold. “I never read anything of yours without being struck with its barrenness!” At the same time he always had a friendly hand for a man who was too hard hit. A newspaper called the _Chronicle_, once attacked a young friend of his, savagely assailing his work. Jerrold took up the cudgels and wrote in his defense. He began by telling how, in some countries, the too luxuriant growth of the vine is prevented by sending asses in to crop the rising shoots. Then he gravely added: