66 Oxford: Spring and Early Summer. 



from his security beyond the Cherwell, and a 

 solitary Nightingale, soon to be driven away by 

 dogs and boats and bathers, may startle you with 

 a burst of song from the neighbouring thicket. 



Of the birds just mentioned, the Swifts, Swal- 

 lows, and Martins build, I need hardly say, in 

 human habitations, the Sand-martins in some 

 sand- or gravel-pit, occasionally far away from the 

 river. The largest colony of these little brown 

 birds, so characteristic of our Oxford summer, is 

 in a large sand-pit on Foxcombe Hill : there, 

 last July, I chanced to see the fledgelings peep- 

 ing out of their holes into the wide world, like 

 children gazing from a nursery window. The 

 destruction all these species cause among the flies 

 which swarm round Oxford must be enormous. 

 One day a Martin dropped a cargo of flies out 

 of its mouth on to my hat, just as it was about 

 to be distributed to the nestlings ; a magnifying 

 glass revealed a countless mass of tiny insects, 

 some still alive and struggling. One little wasp- 

 like creature disengaged himself from the rest, 

 and crawled down my hand, escaping literally 

 from the very jaws of death. 



