What is the glorious train of the Peacock, all filled with eyes, but a false witness of the same kind? It leads us to infer that the bird is three years old at least, since before that period, the covert feathers, which are to form the splendid ornament of maturity, are not developed. What are the lengthened tail-plumes of most refulgent blue, that adorn the Fork-tailed Humming-bird (_Trochilus forficatus_); what the gorgeously golden tail of the Resplendent Trogon; what the elegant lyre-shaped feathers of the Menura; what the lustrous plumage of the Birds of Paradise,--all of which have been but this hour created,--but so many testimonies, unworthy of confidence, to a past history? But, further, every individual feather of this beautiful array of plumage concurs in bearing its unblushing witness to the same untruth. What says the physiologist, who is able to read off these autographic records? [Illustration: GROWTH OF A FEATHER.] "A little while ago, the tips of these feathers were seen each protruding from the extremity of a thick, opaque tube; and a little while before that, the tube itself, was a closed capsule, imbedded in a deep follicle of the skin. If you had then cut open the capsule, you would have found two concentric membranous tubes investing a highly vascular secreting pulp, abundantly supplied with nerves and blood-vessels through an orifice at the bottom of the capsule, and destined to form the substance of the coming feather. Indeed, you would have seen the soft, newly-formed barbs folded round the central organized matrix; and below, the incipient quill, filled with the living pulp-cells, and their blood-vessels, which were destined subsequently to wither up and collapse into the light skinny pith which you see in the perfectly matured feather. These are stages which each of these hundreds of feathers has passed through; and these are but a single generation, which have replaced former series that have been lost in the process of moulting, every one of which had in its turn passed through exactly corresponding stages, and so on backward, till we reach the first race of feathers, which were already partly developed when the chick burst forth from its imprisoning egg-shell." So says the physiologist; but is he not most egregiously in error, since this is the day of these lovely beings' creation? There goes the great Whale, the true Whalebone Whale, rolling and wallowing in the trough of the sea, and exposing his enormous black back like an island amidst the white foam, which he stirs up, "making the deep to be hoary." We will use our privilege and take a peep into his mouth, as we did just now into that of the Shark. What a cavern! and all bristling with long black hair! Why it seems as if the hair grew on the wrong side of his head--on the inside instead of the outside!