London Birds. 27 



Australia could not at all understand the complica- 

 tion of the seasons which a change of hemispheres 

 involved ; and at Carshalton, one brood of little 

 ones was hatched when snow was on the ground, 

 unhappily only to survive in a handsome glass case. 

 They have accommodated themselves to circum- 

 stances better now, and some fine broods have 

 been brought up safely in St. James's Park. The 

 Cygnets in the down are very like young white 

 Swans. 



A single Tern, noticed one blustering day a few 

 winters ago, and a Stormpetrel, " Mother Carey's 

 Chicken," reported to have been picked up alive in 

 Kensington Gardens in December, 1886, introduce 

 the " Longwings," the poetical family of the Albatross 

 and Frigate bird. Unluckily, the Tern was some 

 distance off, and the species could not be identified 

 with perfect certainty ; but a party of Kittiwakes 

 who paid a well-timed visit to the Serpentine in 

 1869, when Mr. Sykes's " Sea-birds Preservation 

 Bill " was under discussion, and other parties of the 

 same beautiful birds, which have more than once 

 since stopped for a time in one or other of the 

 parks, have found themselves great people, and had 

 all their movements chronicled in the fashionable 

 news. The party which visited us in 1869 stayed 

 some time, and were watched with pleasure by 

 hundreds. 



What Campbell wrote of the wild flowers is doubly 

 true of the birds associated with the scenes of child- 

 hood. They can " wake forgotten affections," and 

 " waft us to summers " and winters " of old ; " and 

 probably more than one old Londoner may have felt 

 something not unlike a touch of home-sickness, 

 and found his gas-dried eyes a little more moist than 



D 2 



