76 THE RING OF NATURE 



meet me he-ere ' takes many liberties with it. 

 The last word is clearly ' ginger-beer,' and all the 

 rest is mere stuttering on the first syllable. Thus 

 between the two, these two birds demand a fair 

 lunch. It remains for the greenfinch and the corn 

 bunting to make constant insistence on the one 

 omitted article, the ' che-ee-ese,' the shrill, dreamy 

 shout for which echoes from the hedges all day 

 long. 



And if the chaffinch is a bunting, what, then, is 

 this bird like a dowdy kingfisher sitting in an oak 

 and singing like a tit ? It is the nut -hatch, occupy- 

 ing a genus and a family all to himself, and it 

 seems fairly clear that it has deliberately borrowed 

 a song from the tits, having none of its own. So 

 we must admit that the chaffinch may have 

 borrowed also (with marked improvement) from 

 a generic stranger. For the bullfinch, who might 

 stand for the king of the finches, has in nature 

 scarcely a vestige of that bold pipe with which the 

 enslaved and educated tame bullfinch delights us. 

 The hawfinch is equally silent, and the goldfinch 

 sings, from lack of force, a good deal less notably 

 than the chaffinch. 



We are apt to overlook the robin in our 

 catalogue of March music, because he has been 

 singing so cheerfully all through the cold weather. 

 Scarcely less optimistic has been the hedge-sparrow, 

 who for ever sings a very sweet exordium and 

 ends it on a frayed note that no hedge-sparrow 

 yet has managed to splice on to a discourse. It 



