London Birds. 21 



More than one Moorhen has been picked up on the 

 premises of the Public Record Office, in Chancery 

 Lane. It is not necessary to look far for the expla- 

 nation, as the sky overhead is spider-webbed with 

 telegraph wires running in every direction. 



It is interesting to notice how soon resident birds 

 learn the danger of the wires. When a line was first 

 put up for a few miles along the coast from Cromer, 

 Partridges, Woodcocks, and small birds Larks par- 

 ticularly were constantly picked up more or less 

 mutilated ; but, before the wires had been up many 

 months, it was a rare thing to find a wounded bird. 



Herons occasionally fly over London ; but it is 

 not likely that they often alight. Like most 

 aboriginal tribes, they are gradually dwindling away 

 before the progress of civilisation ; and soon, if we 

 wish to see them wild, we may have to go to the 

 Dutch ditches or the unreclaimable swamps of 

 America. 



According to Michelet, whose delightful little book, 

 " L'Oiseau," all bird lovers should read, the Heron 

 knows he is the degenerate representative of a 

 dethroned race of kings; and mopes in solitude, 

 dreaming of the days of his glory, when his 

 ancestors, the giant waders who left their footmarks 

 in the secondary rocks, fought with great lizards and 

 flying dragons, ages before a single mammal had 

 appeared upon the earth. All the birds of which 

 there are any very early traces were of the Heron 

 tribe, and some of them must have been of enormous 

 size. There are three-toed footprints in the red sand- 

 stone of the Connecticut* which are said to " measure 



* The celebrated Connecticut "Moulds" are now believed 

 " to have been made by certain extinct, in many respects, bird-like 

 reptiles."" The Elements of Ornithology." Mivart 



