THE SELECTOR; AND LITERARY NOTICES OF _NEW WORKS_. * * * * * THE ARCHITECTURE OF BIRDS. This is another volume of the delightful Zoological series of the _Library of Entertaining Knowledge_. We have already a volume and a half of Quadrupeds from the Menageries, a volume of the Transformations of Insects, and another of their Architectural Labours. The present, in well-chosen continuity of a novel plan of illustrating the Animal economy, is devoted to "an examination of Birds in the exercise of their mechanical arts of constructing Nests." "This work," observes the ingenious Editor, "is the _business_ of their lives--the duty which calls forth that wonderful ingenuity, which no experience can teach, and which no human skill can rival." The few introductory pages include a rapid sketch of the methods of classifying Birds adopted by some of the most distinguished naturalists, in which their characteristics are stripped of the jargon of technicality and _hard words_: thus, "Diurnal" birds are explained as "preying in the day-time;" "Piscivorous, feeding upon fish;" "Passeres, or Sparrows;" "Columbæ, or Pigeons," &c. An outline of Mr. Vigors's Quinary System, is also given, and the reader referred to proper sources for illustrations. The Editor then, leaving the beaten path of his predecessors, rambles through "fields and forests, unfettered by system, but alive to whatever he meets with likely to interest for its curiosity or its novelty." The birds are classed according to their peculiar labours: thus, there are Mining Birds, Ground Builders, Mason and Carpenter Birds, Platform Builders, Basket-making Birds, Weaver Birds, Tailor Birds, Felt-making Birds, Cementers, Dome-builders, and Parasite Birds. Each division is so abundantly attractive to the observer of Nature in field or folio, that we scarcely know how to decide on an extract; and the reader will readily admit this dilemma, if he but recollects the early enthusiasm, wonder, and delight, with which he must have regarded a _Bird's Nest_, unless he has been pent up all his life in the brick and mortar and chimney groves of a metropolis. Even then, the ingenuity of rooks may have occurred to him as not a whit less wonderful than the proud glories of art with which he has been environed. It is, however, time to determine, and we, accordingly, choose the following:-- _The Osprey._