the work, and having been pressed by Arthur to come and do his verses there whenever he liked, the three boys went down to Martin’s den, and Arthur was initiated into the lore of birds’-eggs, to his great delight. The exquisite colouring and forms astonished and charmed him, who had scarcely ever seen any but a hen’s egg or an ostrich’s, and by the time he was lugged away to bed he had learned the names of at least twenty sorts, and dreamt of the glorious perils of tree-climbing, and that he had found a roc’s egg in the island as big as Sinbad’s, and clouded like a tit-lark’s, in blowing which Martin and he had nearly been drowned in the volk.