The flight of the little Sand-Pipers, which frequent the salt marshes in numerous flocks, is particularly worthy of study. It is not unlike the flight of Quails, but more evenly sustained, on account of the greater length and power of their wings. These birds are capable of holding an even flight in a perfectly horizontal line, only a few inches above the surface of the ground. When they alight, they seldom make a curve or gyration, but descend in a straight and oblique course. Snow-Buntings usually turn about, just before they reach the ground; and I have seen them perform the most intricate changes, like the movements of a cotillon-party, executed with the rapidity of arrows, when suddenly checked in their flight by the discovery of a good tract of forage. With these observations, which might be indefinitely extended, I take leave of the subject, simply remarking, that to the motions of birds, no less than to their beauty of plumage and the sounds of their voices, are we indebted for a great part of the picturesque attractions of landscape; and the more we study them, the more are we convinced, that, in whatever direction we turn our observations, we may extend them to infinity. There is no limit to any study of Nature, and even one so apparently insignificant as the flight of birds leads to an endless series of interesting facts, and opens the eyes to new beauties in the aspect of Nature and new sources of rational delight. "THE NEW LIFE" OF DANTE. [Concluded.] III. The year 1289 was one marked in the annals of Florence and of Italy by events which are still famous, scored by the genius of Dante upon the memory of the world. It was in this year that Count Ugolino and his sons and grandsons were starved by the Pisans in their tower prison. A few months later, Francesca da Rimini was murdered by her husband. Between the dates of these two terrible events the Florentines had won the great victory of Campaldino; and thus, in this short space, the materials had been given to the poet for the two best-known and most powerful stories and for one of the most striking episodes of the "Divina Commedia." In the great and hard-fought battle of Campaldino Dante himself took part. "I was at first greatly afraid," he says, in a letter of which but a few sentences have been preserved,[A]--"but at the end I felt the greatest joy,--according to the various chances of the battle." When the victorious army returned to Florence, a splendid procession, with the clergy at its head, with the arts of the city each under its banner, and with all manner of pomp, went out to meet it. There were long-continued feasts and rejoicings. The battle had been fought on the 11th of June, the day of St. Barnabas, and the Republic, though already engaged in magnificent works of church-building, decreed that a new church should be erected in honor of the Saint on whose day the victory had been won. [Footnote A: See Lionardo Aretino's _Vita di Dante._]