GOLDFINCHES AT RYME INTRINSICA 219 



the result being that the bird had declined in numbers 

 to the verge of extinction. The statement has been 

 copied into pretty well every book on British birds 

 since it was made. O wise ornithologists, what does 

 the goldfinch live on during nine months of the year ? 

 How does he exist without his natural food ? How 

 does he live even in the unnatural conditions of a cage 

 without thistle-seed ? I know of one case in which 

 the poor prisoner lived shut up in his little wire box 

 for eighteen years. Besides, the museum or closet 

 naturalist is very much out of it when he talks about 

 the extirpation of the thistle. The good old plant is 

 doing very well. Long before the Act of 1894-5 

 which empowers the local authorities to protect their 

 birds, I had been a frequent visitor to, and a haunter 

 of, many extensive thistle-grown places in southern 

 England chalk downs that were once wheatfields, 

 gone out of cultivation for half a century or longer, 

 ruined sheep-walks, where in July and August I could 

 look over hundreds of acres of rust-brown thistles, 

 covered with their glistening down, the seed " dead 

 ripe," and never a goldfinch in sight ! 



And now I must go back to Ryme Intrinsica the 

 pretty name of that village makes me reluctant to leave 

 it and to its goldfinches, the little company of twelve 

 fluttering with anxious cries about my head, a very 

 charming spectacle,and to an even more brilliant picture 

 or vision of the past which was all at once restored 

 to my mental eye. We are familiar with the powerful 

 emotional effect of certain odours, associated with 



