LONDON BIRDS 45 



explanation within the possibilities of nature, fore- 

 shadowed the invention of modern barometers. 



'But with the changeful temper of the skies, 

 As rains condense or sunshine rarefies, 

 So turn the species in their altered minds, 

 Composed by calms and discomposed by winds.' 



The study of birds being a little too heavily laden, 

 at best, with Latin, the quotation is borrowed from 

 Dryden's translation. 



Ninety-nine out of every hundred of the Gulls which 

 find their way up the Thames to London are of the 

 little ' brown-headed ' species (Larus ridibundus). 



Unlike the fashionable world in their judgment of 

 the season at which a residence in London is to be 

 desired, and leaving town just when houses in the West- 

 end are most in demand, they hold views of their 

 own, too, in other matters. Their brightest clothing 

 is reserved exclusively for home use in the country. 



The dull greys in which the birds scramble for fish 

 at the keeper's lodge in St. James's Park are scarcely 

 more like the brilliantly contrasted brown-black velvets, 

 whites, and lavenders in which the same birds a few 

 weeks later hover over ' sitting ' mates than are the 

 surroundings of the ornamental water to the woods 

 which fringe Scoulton Mere the best-known, perhaps, 

 and one of the most important English breeding-places 

 of the species. 



The ' Mere ' which lies inland some twenty-five miles 

 or so from the nearest point of the Norfolk coast, is a 

 shallow lake measuring nearly two miles round. It is 



