netorliand. Flies alive they loved. The cock, who 

 is alive and very gay, doesn't mourn his wife at all, 

 but as it is not good for man to live alone I am going 

 to get him another mate. They used to sleep iu the 

 most extraordinary way I have ever seen, with their 

 tiny heads under or among each others wings and 

 feathers. It was quite impossible to tell if it was one 

 or two birds cuddled together in the highest perch in 

 the cage. Have been very lucky with my birds 

 except for one terrible catastrophe that happened the 

 day before I was leaving home. When I went out to 

 my aviary I found eight dead bodies. There did not 

 seem to be any way for vermin to have got in, and 

 the only conclusion I came to was that, either an Owl 

 had clung to the sides and so terrified the birds they 

 had dashed themselves to death, or it might have been 

 a grey squirrel, as we are infested with these pests. 

 Our neighbour, the Duke of Bedford turned down, I 

 think 2,000, and now all the pretty little English red- 

 coated squirrels are killed, all our wild birds' eggs are 

 eaten, and they destroy all the trees, eat young birds 

 and even rabbits. 



Before the summer I hope to have put my new 

 aviaries up. They will be in a warm, due south, 

 walled in garden, where no wind ever comes, and I 

 hope to do great things with a modicum of that won- 

 derful thing called " luck." 



A friend came back from Sierra L,eone and brought 

 me a Grey African Parrot and three Red and Green 

 lyove-birds. The former is very cross and swears in 

 parrot language whenever I go near, except to feed 

 him. I do not, I must confess, care for parrots much, 

 but still I hope he will learn to talk in time. 



