A DORSET DIARY 159 



December Sth. With the sun full shining, billowy 

 clouds edged with pearl, catkins in the hedges, campions 

 in the banks, daisies and knapweed in the fields, a few 

 primroses, " sweet infantas of the year," in sheltered 

 spots, and flaming patches of gorse, with robins holding 

 rival concerts, and the wren chanting the pleasures of 

 labour, it was easy to say, " If winter comes, can 

 spring be far behind ? " The primroses had come peering 

 from their windows of mould out of curiosity to hear 

 the bleating of the lambs, and lo, it was spring ! So 

 they remained, leaning out of their window-sills, en- 

 joying the zephyrine air they breathed, when they 

 ought to have been inside, reading and taking to heart 

 a poem called, " On an Infant, Dying as soon as Born." 

 Surely that bleating should have warned them ! I, too, 

 began to feel my sap rising until I happened to turn 

 my head to see a couple of robins grappling on the 

 ground five yards away. Their wings frantically beat 

 the sod and they were closed like wrestlers, positively 

 rolling over and over right to my feet. Finally, one 

 extricated himself and took off, the other champion 

 pelting after him. Who was the victor, older or younger 

 generation ? At any rate, I know where to find one 

 sovereign robin, princeling of his little state. I have 

 seen robins fighting desperately scores of times, but 

 never to the death, and I believe that the mortal combat 

 is very uncommon, as it is among other birds, who 

 fight like mad at mating-time, with an occasional loss 

 of a feather or too. But I knew now it was not spring. 

 Pheasants were numerous, and I watched the rooks 

 standing two and three at a time on the cows' backs, 

 ridding them of ticks (an example, like that of starlings 

 and sheep, of " commensalism " in England), while 

 others were tackling the mole-heaps and using their 

 beaks like spades to shovel aside the earth. Curiously 

 enough, I flushed a jack-snipe in the same small, 

 marshy depression where I had previously put up a 

 common snipe. It is a smaller bird, with a less sustained 



rounded by pheasant chicks being too much for him. He acquires 

 the taste, and then becomes more destructive to wild small birds 

 than the sparrow-hawk. 



