“Faix, I’d rather be surfeited wid a good dinner!” quoth Tim Callaghan, and made his exit.
For a couple of years I quite lost sight of Tim, and I began to fear that he had evanished from the earth altogether “without leaving a copy;” but, lo! this very summer, that “bright particular star” appeared unto us again, with a strapping wife, and a young Timotheus at his heels—a perfect facsimile of its father, nose, sleepy eyes, shovel feet and all; and all subsisting, nay flourishing, on three tunes and their unrivalled “varry-a-shins!”
M. G. R—.
[1] Fact! He composed and spoke the verses as I give them.
The Dead Alive.—In my youth I often saw Glover on the stage: he was a surgeon, and a good writer in the London periodical papers. When he was in Cork, a man was hanged for sheep-stealing, whom Glover smuggled into a field, and by surgical skill restored to life, though the culprit had hung the full time prescribed by law. A few nights after, Glover being on the stage, acting Polonius, the revived sheep-stealer, full of whisky, broke into the pit, and in a loud voice called out to Glover, “Mr Glover, you know you are my second father; you brought me to life, and sure you have to support me now, for I have no money of my own: you have been the means of bringing me back into the world, sir; so, by the piper of Blessington, you are bound to maintain me.” Ophelia never could suppose she had such a brother as this. The sheriff was in the house at the time, but appeared not to hear this appeal; and on the fellow persisting in his outcries, he, through a principle of clemency, slipped out of the theatre. The crowd at length forced the man away, telling him that if the sheriff found him alive, it was his duty to hang him over again!—Recollections of O’Keefe.
LARUS MINUTUS, THE LITTLE GULL.
This bird, hitherto known in Great Britain only as an occasional and rare visitant, has now been added to the Fauna of Ireland—one of a pair seen between Shannon Harbour and Shannon Bridge having been shot in the month of May of the present year, by Walter Boyd, Esq. of the 97th regiment, and presented by him to the Natural History Society of Dublin. It has been stuffed by Mr Glennon of Suffolk Street, who continues to gratify the lovers of natural history by a free inspection of it.
The Little Gull was first noticed with certainty as a British bird by Montague, who, in the Supplement to his Ornithological Dictionary, published in 1813, described an immature specimen, the plumage being that of the yearling in transition to its winter garb. The Irish specimen, on the contrary, is invested with its full summer plumage, as described by Temminck. The head and upper portion of the neck are black; the lower portion of the neck and under parts of the body are white, and at first exhibited a rosy tint, which as is usual quickly faded after death; rump and tail white; upper parts pearl grey, the secondaries and quills being tipped with white; legs and toes bright red; bill of a reddish brown, rather than of the deep lake of Temminck, or arterial blood-red of Selby; its length ten inches, or somewhat more than one-half of that of the blackheaded gull (Larus ridibundus), its nearest congener.