8 Oxford: Autumn and Winter. 



familiar pollards and thorn - bushes, where the 

 Willow -warblers and Whitethroats were every 

 morning to be seen or heard, are like so many 

 desolate College rooms in the heart of the Long 

 Vacation. Deserted nests, black and mouldy, 

 come to light as the leaves drop from the trees- 

 nurseries whose children have gone forth to try 

 their fortune in distant countries. But we soon 

 discover that things are not so bad as they seem. 

 The silence is not quite unbroken : winter visitors 

 arrive, and the novelty of their voices is cheering, 

 even if they do not break into song ; some kinds 

 are here in greater numbers than in the hot 

 weather, and others show themselves more boldly, 

 emerging from leafy recesses in search of food 

 and sunshine. 



Every autumn brings us a considerable immi- 

 gration of birds that have been absent during 

 the summer, and increases the number of some 

 species who reside with us in greater or less 

 abundance all the year. Among these is the 

 familiar Robin. My friend the Rev. H. A. Mac- 

 pherson, in his recently published Birds of Cum- 

 berland, tells us that in that northern county the 



