148 Midland Village: Railway and Woodland. 



border the line, it is chiefly the melancholy tribe 

 of Buntings that will attract my notice. 



I trust my friends the Buntings will not take 

 offence at being called melancholy ; I cannot 

 retract the word, except in what is now called 

 "a parliamentary sense." I have just been look- 

 ing through a series of plates and descriptions of 

 all the Buntings of Europe, and in almost every 

 one of them I see the same deflected tail and 

 listless attitude, 1 and read of the same monotonous 

 and continually repeated note. The Buntings 

 form in fact, though apt to be confused with one 

 another owing to their very strong family like- 

 ness, perhaps the most clearly-marked and idio- 

 syncratic genus among the whole range of our 

 smaller birds. This may be very easily illustrated 

 from our three common English species. Look 

 at the common Corn Bunting, as he sits on the 

 wires or the hedge -top ; he is lumpy, loose- 

 feathered, spiritless, and flies off with his legs 

 hanging down, and without a trace of agility or 



1 The Meadow Bunting (Emberiza da) seemed to me, when 

 I met with it in Switzerland this summer, to be more lively 

 and restless than other Buntings. 



