If you ask me about fossil-birds, I must tell you that very few have been found. However, if you go to the British Museum, look out for a large stone slab covered with footprints of birds. It was taken from a quarry in an American valley, and is a piece of sandstone, which was once soft enough to receive the impress of the feet of the giant wading-bird, probably much larger than an ostrich, which once walked across it with long strides. You will also trace upon it the tracks of smaller birds. In New Zealand very large bones of an extinct bird have been found, but the most remarkable remains have been discovered in Germany of a bird which has been given the name of "Lizard-tailed," because it has a tail with vertebræ, from each joint of which feathers spring. Three claws are attached to the ends of the wing-bones, like the single claw of the bat. What is left of this specimen, which is thought to have been about the size of a rook, is to be seen in the Natural History branch of the South Kensington Museum. I mention this in case you should have a chance of visiting it there. And now, to speak of those birds which we know best, I think there are none which seem to belong to us so much as these three--the thrush, the blackbird, and the robin; for they are with us all the year. The thrush begins to sing very early, before there are any leaves for him to hide himself among, while the robin's song is heard not only in autumn, but in winter when all others are silent. All these birds feed upon worms and insects, not on grain and fruit like the larks and finches and starlings; but they are very glad of berries in winter when they can get them. The other day I met a little boy about seven years old carrying a basket with some dozen snails in the bottom of it, and looking as if he had found a wonderful prize. "What are you going to do with them?" I said. "Give them to our thrush. He cracks the shells and eats them, he does." "Does your thrush sing?" I asked. "Oh, yes!" he replied. "You can hear him all over the house." The song of even a captive thrush is sweet indeed; but I would rather hear its voice in a choir of birds singing in the woods. The blackbird's clear note, like the thrush's, may be heard very early in the morning, and on still evenings, as it "sings darkling" in some leafy bower. Its eggs are bluish green, with dark spots, while the thrush's five eggs are light blue. There are white blackbirds--if such a thing can be--in the Alps, and occasionally in this country; with us you may know the cock by its being very black, while the hen is brownish-black, and I think both birds are best known by the "orange tawny" bill. But neither the blackbird nor the thrush is so pretty as the "little bird with bosom red" of which we are all so fond. "Our thrushes now are silent, Our swallows flown away; But robin's here in coat of brown, And scarlet breast-knot gay."