NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 



83 



few dots of lilac. The spots are nearly always small, and are 

 seldom abundant." 



Wrens often breed in very queer places. Lord Nortliwick 

 has been good enough to give me a very good example of this 

 as represented in the drawing opposite. The keeper at North- 

 wick Park is in the habit of nailing the vermin he kills against 

 the side of a barn or outhouse ; in this instance a wren had, from 

 some caprice of its own, chosen the interspace between two 

 mummied bodies of stoats to build her nest. It will be observed 

 that the tips of the tails are black, hence it is known that they are 

 stoats or ermines. The nest is about six inches long, and is com- 

 posed of moss leaves and fine hay, interwoven into the fur of 

 the stoats for support. May we not infer from this that 

 birds do not fear their enemies when dead and dry ? I do not 

 think that rooks are scared by the appearance of one of their 

 brethren hung on a stick as a scarecrow. I hear that in Ire- 

 land the peasants are so ragged that an old hat and jacket will 

 not frighten birds. A friend of mine who came into an estate 

 in Ireland ordered a scarecrow to be made of the clothes of a 

 well-dressed Rotten-Row dandy ; the birds were so unaccus- 

 tomed to see such a sight, that they were quite taken aback. 



THE WOODLARK (A. arlorea), p. 101. This bird, writes Mr. 

 Napier, " is not generally distributed ; but in some districts it is 

 pretty abundant : it is an early as well as a late breeder, having 

 eggs from April till the end of July. The nest is a careless 

 structure made of tine grass and a little moss. It is sometimes 

 hardly a cup shape, but it is usually of this form, and loses its 

 shape when an attempt is made to move it. The ground-colour 

 of one variety of egg is yellowish white, spotted over with fine 

 dots of ash, and a smaller number of purple brown ; a second 

 has a pale rosy tint, with spots of the same hue of a darker 

 shade ; a third has spots of rosy brown ; in a fourth the ground 

 is obscured by minute spots of purple umber, which give a 

 uniform appearance to the egg." The woodlark is a very free 

 and beautiful singer in captivity. 



WHITETHROAT, p. 101. The whitethroat (C. cinerea), writes 

 Mr. Napier, "forms its nest of grass, or the hollow stalks of the 

 goose grass, or lady's bedstraw. It lines its nest with fine grass or 

 roots, with occasionally a few hairs, but wool is seldom if ever 

 iiM'd. The nest is a most loose and careless structure, but very 

 difficult to imitate by man, for at the least touch it falls to pieces, 

 yet the materials are so interlaced that its construction is an in- 

 teresting study. It is a summer visitor to Britain, and breeds in 



