58 Oxford: Spring and Early Summer. 



is a bit of cover, and very often they will turn 

 up where least expected ; in a corn-field, for ex- 

 ample, where I have seen them running up and 

 down the corn-stalks as if they were their native 

 reeds. But you must either know where to find 

 the Reed-warbler, or learn by slow degrees. 

 Parsons' Pleasure is almost the only place known 

 to me where 



" The Reed-warbler swung in a nest with her young, 

 Deep-sheltered and warm from the wind." x 



There is, however, in this case, at least a plau- 

 sible answer to Mr. Harting's question. Owing to 

 the prime necessity of reeds for the building of 

 this deep-sheltered nest, which is swung between 

 several of them, kept firm by their centrifugal 

 tendency, yielding lovingly yet proudly to every 

 blast of wind or current of water owing to this 

 necessity, the Reed-warbler declines to take up 

 his abode in any place where the reeds are not 

 thick enough and tall enough to give a real 



1 Mr. Courthope's Paradise of Birds. No one who loves 

 birds or poetry should fail to read Mr. Raskin's commentary 

 on the chorus from which these lines are taken, in Love's 

 Afeinie, p. 139 and foil. 



