5 o Summer Studies of Birds and Books CHAP. 



too much engrossed in Aristotle and fishing to find 

 room for natural history. Now, wherever I go, I find 

 something new to learn, for birds are everywhere ; 

 and in this very spot I had a note to make that was 

 of great interest to me. In the Alps I have noticed 

 that the song of the Tree-pipit is heard in all the 

 lower timbered pastures up to the point at which the 

 pines come to an end, and the real alps begin. To 

 that point you must ascend if you would hear the 

 true Alpine Pipit, which there takes the place of the 

 other, singing perhaps a more monotonous song but 

 one quite as blithe and cheering, as it hovers in the 

 air out of sight, then slowly nears you, to drop on to 

 a boulder or a tuft of alpine rhododendron. During 

 my short climb up the Welsh hill-side I had heard 

 the Tree-pipit continually, and when I reached the 

 margin of the wood and came out on those delicious 

 gentler slopes, where only a tree here and there 

 breaks the welcome sky-line, the same bird was still 

 singing vigorously ; but as soon as I had left these 

 straggling trees behind me, and was fairly out on the 

 open moorland of sweet short grass and thick dry 

 ling, then I was saluted by the voice, not of the 

 alpine bird, but of our own English Meadow-pipit, 

 which descends in autumn, like its alpine cousin, to 

 lower feeding grounds, and is known in fact to all of 

 us, at all seasons, as the Titlark. For a moment I 

 was fairly carried off to those exquisite alps above 



