THE BIRDS OF COOKHAM AND THE NEIGHBOURHOOD. 109 
the air it is by no means easy to shoot them, and few fall to the 
gun: but folding-nets are more destructive, and large numbers 
of these pretty birds are caught near London every year. The 
first Brambling was obtained at Hampstead in 1868 on the Ist 
of October, a very early date for their arrival in this country. 
Genus PassER. 
Passer domesticus. The Common Sparrow. 
Passer montanus. The Tree Sparrow. 
This bird is not common at Cookham, and Mr. Briggs never 
obtained a specimen till 1865, although, doubtless, he had pre- 
viously overlooked the species. In the autumn of that year he 
went to Cambridgeshire, where he found the bird common and 
shot several specimens. On placing his foot outside his cottage 
door on the first morning of his return, the first thing he heard 
was the note of a Tree-sparrow, with which he had become 
familiar during his recent visit to Cambridgeshire, and he soon 
after shot the bird in an ash tree. This specimen is now in my 
collection. On the 10th of last November I shot a second out of 
a flock of birds in a stubble-field, killing two Yellow-Ammers at 
the same discharge; and in January last a third specimen was 
shot near White Place. Doubtless the Tree-sparrow has often 
been overlooked or confounded with the common species; still it 
cannot be called a common bird in the neighbourhood of Cookham. 
Genus Ligurinus. 
Ligurinus chloris. The Greenfinch. 
Very common at Cookham and in the neighbourhood. 
‘Science cannot, at present, afford to throw hard words at 
provincialisms. Too often, in her nomenclature, has she failed 
to interpret nature; too often only given us the skeleton leaf 
instead of the flower. A long list of provincialisms might be given, 
where by a word a whole train of associations is aroused, and the 
close relationship of all things shown. ... Many of our most 
expressive terms are fast dyingout...... As schools are built, 
and schoolmasters increase, so will the old-world words perish 
in the struggle with the new.”— Cornhill Magazine, July, 1865, 
