THE YOUTH'’S CABINET.

257

 

the Danes, whom he checked ; and with.

a fourth of their numbers, he cut to
pieces the Russian army, commanded
by the Czar, at Narva, crossed the
Dwina, gained a victory over Saxony,
and carried his arms into Poland. At
twenty-one he had conquered Poland,
and dictated to her a new sovereign.
At twenty-four he had subdued Saxony.

ase

The Starling.

HERE is a bird called the orchard
starling, about which Mr. Wilson,

a gentleman who has written a

great deal concerning the birds

of our country, gives a very curious ac-
count. He says that this bird commonly
hangs its nest from the twigs of an ap.
ple-tree, and makes it ina very singular
manner. The outside is made of a par-
ticular kind of long, tough grass, that
will bend without breaking, and this
grass is knit or sewed through and
through in a thousand directions, just as
if done with a needle. The little crea-

se se

 

La Fayette was a major-general in
the American army at the age of eight-
een; was but twenty when he was
wounded at Brandywine; but twenty-
two when he raised supplies for the
army, on his own credit, at Baltimore ;
and but thirty-three when raised to the
office of commander-in-chief of the Na-
tional Guards of France,—Selected?

=) KP
BA Pre,

ee

—_

ture does it with its feet and bill, Mr.
Wilson says that he one day showed one
of these nests to an old lady, and she
was so much struck with the work that
she asked ‘him, half in earnest, if he did
not think ‘that these birds could be
taught to darn stockings? Mr. Wilson
took the pains too to draw out one of
these grass threads, and found that it
measured thirteen inéhes, and in that
distance the bird who used it had passed
it in and on thirty-four times.”

“TI saw,” says a writer who took a
great. interest in the habits of birds,
‘when I was in the West Indies, another
kind of starling which will cut leaves

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