84 Summer Studies of Birds and Books CHAP. 



as it is when they are presented to you in the miser- 

 able condition of " skins." Nearly a year after we 

 had left Switzerland, after the gloomiest of winters, 

 made doubly triste by the last epidemic of influenza, 

 my ears were once more gladdened by the strain I 

 had learnt to love, and this in England, and 

 within ten minutes' walk of my own house in 

 Oxfordshire. To this snug corner of the midlands, 

 and to that osier-bed whose delights I began by 

 recording, I must now ask you once more to accom- 

 pany me. 



I was returning from a stroll on Whitsunday, 

 5th June 1892, and was just turning the corner of this 

 overgrown wilderness of willows, when I was sud- 

 denly pulled up by a fragment of song, undecided, 

 imperfect, yet of so sweet and silvery a tone that 

 neither Eeed nor Sedge Warbler could have uttered 

 it. Such moments are never to be forgotten by those 

 who have ever felt the spell of a wild bird's voice. 

 There is an inward conviction in the hearer's mind 

 that overpowers all transient troubles, and banishes 

 utterly all thoughts of work and books ; and with it 

 there is the not unpleasing phantom of a doubt a 

 piquant spice of uncertainty not so much about 

 your own conclusion as to the bird's identity, but as 

 to the chance of getting others to accept it. And 

 on this occasion, wait as long as I would, I could 

 obtain no glimpse of the singer ; nor was he inclined 



