98 CHARACTEniSTICS OF COMMON BIRDS. 



"How sweet in the raoniing to wake from your slumber, 

 The sun shining joj'ouslj' into your room, 

 Whilst in woods aud by meadows, the birds out of number, 

 Send forth tlicir blithe notes 'mid the purest perfume. 



You rise from your couch from the sweetest of visions, 



A dreamy oblivion of gentle repose. 

 And slumbering and waking, such tender transitions, 



Tou know not the dawning, you feel not the close. 



Too perfect to last, and too full of sweet rapture. 



Such hours are bright gleams in the memory of time; 



Then, oh! let lis store the invaluable capture. 

 And mingling the lovely, still feel the sublime!" 



From this we roam forth upon the heathy whilst the dew drops still hang 

 upon the grass-tops; how sweet the air is, how free the scene, 



"Tt is a feast to linger there. 

 If only 'twere to think." 



But there is much more than this; we have not gone far before up springs 

 the Titlark, and flits about at a short height, with his sharp crj; and 

 perhaps, above the wreaths of mist that wrap the hills like a fleecy mantle, 

 the Kestrel goes skimming along, ever and anon pausing with out.spread 

 wings, and again away in search of a quarry. Then there is always the 

 Peewit with his eccentric movements, diving and uttering his own name 

 in very pleasantry. Try to find his nest; you will be puzzled; it id 

 open enough; but where? aye, that is the question; so like spotted stones 

 of the moor, are the eggs, so unconspicuously coloured and hued, and you 

 must watch, and closely too, before you can find them. I remember an 

 old man who got a precarious subsistence by vending those eggs, and 

 broom-making, and who was known as 'old Chick' for many years in the 

 neighbourhood of Chobham bogs, and he was a dead hand at finding the 

 nests of the Peewit; and the story went that some friend, having advised 

 him that he could obtain a large price for his commodity in London, 

 thither with a vast store in a basket on his back he trudged; but alas! 

 for his want of foresight, his iron-shod heels no sooner reached the smooth 

 pavement at Hyde Park corner, than poor old Chick came sprawling with 

 his eggs, which were broken in the fall; and what was worse, he got 

 nothing but ridicule when he returned to his moors. 



I shall take warning by his fate, and not carry all my treasure at once 

 to market; so for the present I shall 'intromit.' 



Pembroke Square, Kensington, February, 1856. 



