68 THE RETROSPECT. 



young naturalist, Mr. James Gardner, of 52, High Holborn, offering to get 

 him some, he replied that he had then twenty-four in the flesh. That they 

 occur here only occasionally I am certain, never having seen any before. 

 In the Rev. F. 0. Morris's splendid, cheap, and coloured work on British 

 Birds, a work that no young naturalist wishing to attain eminence in his 

 profession ought to be without, and from which, without any flattery, I can 

 say ■ I have learnt more about birds than I could have done from any other 

 work on the subject; the author says, "In England it is in general only 

 rarely met with, but great numbers are said to have been taken in the 

 neighbourhood of London about the year 1827, and also in 1829." He 

 then mentions where a few others have been taken, and goes on to say 

 that it is an inhabitant of Greenland. Whether its leaving its ice-bound 

 habitat, and coming to our more genial clime, augurs a severe winter, I 

 leave it to those who are wiser in those matters than myself to determine. 

 — John Button, St. Peter's Place, Hammersmith, December 15th., 1855. 



Lime Tree. — A small Lime Tree in front of a house a few doors from 

 mine in the Kennington Road, has this year put forth a second crop of 

 leaves, and is now (in November) in full spring garb, while all its neigh- 

 bours exhibit nothing but bare boughs. — E. K. B., Kennington Road, London, 

 November, 1855. 



€\t Urtrnspftt. 



Bo not for a moment imagine that a Lillyputian in ornithology has 

 the audacity to contest with a Leviathan in that interesting branch of 

 Natural History. I wish to appear in "The Naturalist" simply as a recorder 

 of facts — to describe Nature as I find her, and thereby invite inferences to 

 be deduced by our ornithologists most eminent in that department of science. 



You state that the Hawk figured in No. 55 of "The Naturalist," is, in 

 your opinion, either a variety of the Sparrow Hawk, or probably an hybrid 

 between the Kestrel and the Sparrow Hawk. By the way I may, in limine, 

 remark how strange it is that with living authorities such as Selby, Yarrell, 

 and Jardine, we have not been favoured puhlicMy with a single line from 

 our ornithological literati as regards this Hawk. My description of it may 

 have been deficient, but in order to make it as intelligible as possible to 

 the readers of "The Naturalist," I obtained Mr. Benny's assistance to 

 figure it in the same number, and I did so chiefly to tempt opinions from 

 men, whom we naturally look up to in order to set us right. You, Sir, 

 are an exception to this omission, and your remarks have induced me to offer 

 to your readers a still further explanation. 



With respect to this Hawk being a "variety of the Sparrow Hawk," 

 it appears to me that authors regard varieties of the Sparrow Hawk as 



