LONDON BIRDS 35 



really may be as it is to guess tlie exact whereabouts of 

 a passing flock of Geese. 



About thirty years ago a Jack Snipe was picked 

 up by Lord Lansdowne, then a Junior Lord of the 

 Treasury, at the foot of a lamp-post at the corner of 

 the Treasury Garden, in the Horse Guards Parade. 

 The poor little bird had shared the fate of the many 

 thousands, which every year at the seasons of migration 

 are attracted, like moths to a candle, by the light- 

 houses, and dash their lives out against the lantern 

 glasses. The beak and one of the wings were broken. 



Some years later, in January 1894, when Mr. Glad- 

 stone's Home Rule Bill was under discussion, another 

 Jack Snipe was picked up, this time on the premises 

 of the Bank of England. The watchman was going 

 his night round at about eleven, when the bird fluttered 

 to the ground beside him. It had evidently flown 

 against the telegraph wires, as the upper mandible was 

 nearly cut through at the base, but was otherwise 

 uninjured, though a breast-bone, which felt through the 

 feathers like the back of a knife, told a tale of frozen 

 marshes and scant provisions. 



The latitudes, in sympathy with the times of Parlia- 

 mentary session, were just then out of joint. The 

 mercury, according to the readings reported in the 

 newspapers, stood higher within the Arctic Circle than 

 on the Riviera. A slice from the North Pole had 

 apparently drifted south to Middlesex; and the orna- 

 mental water in St. James's Park with flapping 

 Cormorants, Herons, Pochards, Widgeon, Swans, Ducks, 



