WILD LIFE IN A SOUTHERN COUNTY. 299 



a common opinion that it depends on the weather, 

 and that in hard winters, when the cold is severe and 

 prolonged, the flocks are much larger. Wood-pigeons 

 are seldom, it is said, seen in great flocks till the 

 winter is advanced. 



Has the date of the harvest any influence upon the 

 migration of birds ? The harvest in some counties is, 

 of course, much earlier than in others a fact of 

 which the itinerant labourer takes advantage, follow- 

 ing the wave of ripening grass and corn. By the time 

 they have mown the grass or reaped the wheat, as the 

 case may be, in one county, the crops are ripe in 

 another, to which they then wend their way. 



One of the very earliest counties, perhaps, is Surrey. 

 The white bloom of the blackthorn seems to show 

 there a full fortnight earlier than it does on the same 

 line of latitude not many miles farther west. The 

 almond trees exhibit their lovely pink blossom ; the 

 pears bloom, and presently the hawthorn comes out 

 into full leaf, when a degree of longitude to the west 

 the hedges are bare and only just showing a bud. 

 Various causes probably contribute to this difference 

 of elevation, difference of soil, and so forth. Now the 

 spring visitors as the cuckoo, the swallow, and wry- 

 neck appear in Surrey considerably sooner than they 

 do farther west. The cuckoo is sometimes a full week 

 earlier. It would seem natural to suppose that the 

 more forward state of vegetation in that county has 

 something to do with the earlier appearance of the 

 bird. But I should hesitate to attribute it entirely 



