No greater tribute has yet been paid to the already improved condition of our city parks under the new régime, than the arrival in them of strange birds by which they had not hitherto been patronized. Within a few days past several owls have been captured in the solemn pines with which these delightful retreats have lately been made green, if not shady. The owl, as is well known, was regarded by the ancients as the Bird of Wisdom. He fully sustained his right to the title by letting severely alone the city parks while they were still dreary and disgusting wastes. The only night-birds by which these were, then occupied were of the featherless (and apparently motherless) kind, and were well known to the police. They were quite as watchful, it is true, as the genuine feathered owl that has just commenced to give its very extraordinary countenance to the parks, but then it was with other people's watches, not their own. It is with much concern that we hear reports of the slaughter of some of these solemn but beautiful owls that have come to ventilate their wisdom among us. The reports in question were very definite and unmistakable, most of them proceeding from revolvers handled by members of the Municipal Police Force, while others emanated from the barrels of shot-guns wielded by beery Teutons, who rushed frantically out from their sawdust lairs when they were told that the game was up—that is, that an owl was up a tree. This was scurvy treatment for the visitors. To "put a head on" an owl, which is already provided with one so large and so comical, appears to be a work both superfluous and inhuman. The only apology for it in this instance is, that these night-birds of prey were supposed by the police to have been attracted to the parks by the prospect of succulent suppers on the very well-fed sparrows by which these resorts are now thickly tenanted. The owls hooted at this notion; but their hooting was only answered by shooting, and the poor foolish Birds of Wisdom have been stuffed with tow instead of sparrows, and set up to form the nucleus of an ornithological Rogues' Gallery in the City Hall.

On visiting the Battery a few days ago, one of the park-keepers (himself looking in his bright new uniform somewhat like a blue-jay) expressed his conviction that, next spring, that time-honored pleasure-garden of the old Knickerbockers will be a paradise for song-birds such as it has not been since the original Swedish Nightingale warbled her "woodnotes wild" there a score of years ago, more or less. The sea-gulls, he thought (will Judge HILTON have the goodness to provide these park officers with manuals of ornithology?), would build their nests in the pine-trees with which the wide esplanade that stretches away to the water's edge will soon be bristling. Honest, but mistaken young man! As well might he have said that the sea-wall [a very substantial one, by the way] would build its nest in the melancholy pines. But it is reasonable to hope that pine grossbeaks will find their way thither, and that the German flutes of various finches will provide for the coming Bavarians and Hessians (should any be left after the siege of Paris and the sorties of the truculent TROCHU) a welcome such as has not heretofore been accorded to the strangers who at Castle Garden first set foot upon our shore.

The Bowling Green—late a nuisance and a pandemonium, now an oasis of verdure—has not as yet reported its owl, but the public eye is upon it, and the nocturnal marauder may yet be detected in the forks of the great willow-trees, which still retain their verdure. The sparrows are almost disproportionately numerous in this small park, but this may be accounted for. It has lately been laid down with new grass, the green, tender blades of which, just now beginning to crop out, are probably mistaken by the birds for "sparrow-grass" munificently provided for them by the Commissioners.

In all of these city parks the contrast between past and present is very striking and agreeable. But a few short months ago they were the domiciles and dormitories of outcast roughs and vagrants of the worst description, whose "'owls," as a Cockney explorer observed, "made night 'ideous." The only muss now common to them is the mus tribe, comprising the mus ratus, or ordinary rat (so called from its haunting ordinaries, we suppose), and the timid mouse, with which the Bird of Wisdom is contented to put up when the sparrows decline to come to his claw.

Central Park offers numerous attractions now to all who love to keep up their animal spirits by studying animal life. There is a fat little Asiatic pig there, who is the very picture of content. A red pig he is, and exceedingly well behaved. The best red pig, in fact, that we remember ever to have seen, beating the learned pig by several trumps and an ace. When we last saw him he was very busy with his pen, and our surmise was that his mind was fully occupied with arrangements for editing the works of BACON, or, possibly, those of HOGG.

The young elephant has increased immensely, since last year, in stature and girth. He is remarkably neat in his person, wisping himself all over with hay for hours at a time. Whether he does this for cleanliness or to obtain a flavor of elephant for the hay is doubtful, however, for he always eats it after having made use of it as a flesh-brush for a good while. Notices requesting visitors "not to feed or annoy the animals" are posted on the compartments. In the case of the elephant, though, it might be as well also to caution persons against making jokes about his trunk—a low kind of ribaldry in which every carpet-bagger, who never had one, seems to think himself bound to indulge.

There is a cinnamon bear in one of the outside cages, whose claws remind one sharply that cinnamon and cloves go together, and that clove is a tense of the verb "to cleave." But we do not want such a fellow as that to cleave to us, since it is evident that a grocer kind of brute than a cinnamon bear cannot be found in all the ursine family. "Sugar and spice, and all things nice," are stated in song to be the materials that "little girls are made of," but if we thought that cinnamon bear figured upon the list of groceries thus used for modelling young maidens, we would either fly to the desert with Dr. MARY WALKER or immure ourselves in a nunnery with SUSAN B. ANTHONY, and all the other females of the anti-sugar-and-spice persuasion.

Fattest of all the beasts in the Central Park collection is the larger of the two grizzly bears. From the easy way in which he takes life, he reminds one of a successful politician, who had worked his way up from being a slim and impecunious "repeater" to the position of Alderman, or Custom House official, and President of the Fat Men's Club. There is a drunken leer in this beast's eye, an inebriate roll in all his movements, that lead one mechanically to peer into the darkness of his den with the view of seeing what the Bar fixings are like. It would be a rare freak to treat the huge fellow to a cask of rum and sugar, and then stand by with a comic artist, and take down for PUNCHINELLO the traits of BRUIN the Grizzly on a "bender," and with all his repressed nature brought out by the strong drink.

"Carnivorium" is the word now properly applied by the Park authorities to the establishment in which the wild beasts are kept. That is, the term will be correct when applied only to the particular department allotted to the fierce flesh-devouring animals. At present camels are accommodated in the Carnivorium, and so are cows, which is a sort of slur upon the habits of these poor innocent vegetarians. The new word, however, is likely to find considerable extension, and if any provider for the public maw should choose hereafter to call his dining-saloon a Carnivorium, none would have a right to cavil at him on philological grounds, at least.

By and by the Park will have a new and sensational attraction. The antediluvian monsters of that great FRANKENSTEIN of the period, Mr. WATERHOUSE HAWKINS, will soon be advanced enough to "give fits" to the nursery-maids and their tender charges. Accipitrine in features as in name, Mr. HAWKINS is a living illustration of the Darwinian theory. Certainly his remote ancestors must have been of the falcon family. He revels in birds; though, when he cannot obtain those, he can put up with lizards, which he usually prefers manufactured, and of a length not less than from sixty to one hundred feet. This reminds us that a saurian of a hundred feet should not be confounded with a centipede.

It will be seen, then, that the landscape-gardens of our great city are in a fair way of being able to afford some illustrations for students of Natural History more interesting than the oyster-shells and old boots with which most of them have hitherto been stocked.

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Punchinello, Volume 2, No. 36, December 3, 1870

An Anecdote from Salt Lake

NATURAL HISTORY IN OUR PARKS

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