GOLDFINCHES 217 



associated with our early life, in this connection; 

 occasionally effects equally strong are produced by 

 sights and sounds, and this was one. As I stood in 

 the churchyard watching the small flutterers in their 

 black and gold and crimson liveries, listening to their 

 excited cries, a vision of my boyhood was brought 

 before me, so vivid as to seem like reality. After 

 many years I was a boy once more, in my own distant 

 home, and the time was October, when the brilliant 

 spring merges into hot summer. I was among the 

 wind-rustled tall Lombardy poplars, inhaling their 

 delicious smell, at that spot where a colony of a 

 couple of dozen black-headed siskins were breeding. 

 They are without the crimson on their faces; their 

 plumage is black and gold, but to all English-speaking 

 people in that far country they are known as gold- 

 finches, and in flight and habits and love of thistle- 

 seed and in melody and in their anxious piping notes 

 they are like our English bird. They are now fluttering 

 about me, like these of Ryme Intrinseca, displaying 

 their golden feathers in the brilliant sunshine, uttering 

 their agitated cries, while I climb tree after tree to 

 find two or three or four nests in each — dainty little 

 mossy down-lined cups placed between the slender 

 branches and trunk, each with its complement of 

 shining pearly eggs — a beautiful sight to a boy! 



Then another picture follows. We are now in the 

 burning days of November and December, the vast 

 open treeless plains as far as one can see parched to 

 a rust-brown, and cattle and horses and sheep in 

 thousands to be watered at the great well. I see the 



