J. B.'S enows.* Somewhere about this time last year, Z.
B. made herself remarkable by a serious effort in art, her "Illustrations of Scripture by an Animal- painter " : in the little children's-book now before us, the designs which form its principal feature are trifles, but not the less capital of their kind. They exhibit the history of a rookery, from the nest-budding in spring- time to the irate farmer's shooting-party and the crow-pie finally re- suiting therefrom. The style is of the simplest—partaking even of the purposely juvenile; but one finds in the designs a most genuine fund of humour, quaintness, observant knowledge, and keen feeling for na- ture The two nest-builders tugging against each other for a twig ; the three, in the same illustration, flying near the ground in a line, each with its trophy in its beak ; and the general view of the rookery on the following page, with the bristling tree-tops re- lieved against sky and water, simply as it is done,--these, not to speak of other such points in plenty, make the little book as pleasant to an artists eye as it will be funny to a child's. The human figures are meagrely drawn ; but in them too there is constantly a characteristic notion, as in the farmer vowing vengeance on his black-plumed spoilers. The feeling
of the designs, on the whole, has something akin to touches of the old illuminators. Some copies of " Caw ! Caw !" are coloured, others plain ; the colour being, of course, not very artistic, but aiding the juvenile point of treatment The versified narrative-answers its purpose.
• Caw! Caw! or the Chronicle of Crews: a Tale of .the spring-time. By B. 'Illustrated by J. B.
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