WOULD A-WOOING GO 



But the gregarious instinct is quick to assert itself, and 

 young starlings gather in merry bands directly they can 

 use their wings. 



AFTER peacocks, there can scarcely be a more glorious 

 bird-ornament to any lawn than the 

 Garden pheasant in his courting array; and just 

 Pheasants now, where pheasants have been induced 

 to haunt gardens, they give every day the 

 liveliest displays of their powers as duellists. A fight 

 between two well-matched warriors is a spectacular 

 affair ; wings are spread, and tails are elevated in peacock 

 fashion, as the adversaries face each other, with heads 

 held low, fencing for an opening for beaks and spurs, 

 while uttering their shrill challenges. The fight that 

 follows would have delighted the heart of such a 

 connoisseur of cock-fighting as Henry VIII, had it 

 taken place in his Royal Cock-pit at Whitehall, and 

 yet sometimes, at the end of a long duel, not a feather 

 will have flown. 



WOULD A-WOOING GO 



THE time of the batrachians is come, and once more 

 the garden frog makes sport for the garden 

 The terrier. That his first thought, on waking 



Frogs from winter sleep in the mud, is to go a- 



wooing, his croaking testifies. In one 

 respect the mated frogs often lack sense, when laying 

 their one or two thousand eggs in a puddle which must 

 quickly dry. The frog's croaking, now a pleasant, rural 

 sound, is no doubt as much a love-charm as the 

 nightingale's song, and he has other points with which 



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