BRITISH BIRDS AND BIRD LOVERS. 169 



over them from the plantation on the hill. " Passing rich on 

 forty pounds a year," the good man's days are daily soothed by 

 his feathered favourites, so that of all the walks in life he chiefly 

 doats on the Happy Valley which bounds his own guileless 

 activities. 



Nor is it otherwise with the village doctor, so much of whose 

 life is necessarily passed in the saddle or on the gig's seat 

 visiting a widely scattered circle of patients. He observes as 

 carefully as the parson, but from the bent of his mind, induced 

 by his peculiar occupation, he proceeds a step further, to 

 theorise on facts. As might be expected, the doctrine of the 

 survival of the fittest is a favourite with him, and he has worked 

 a good deal at natural selection, beginning at the few fossil 

 birds which are as yet known to science. He is not even 

 alarmed at "sexual dimorphism," and "divergent varieties." 

 The parson is more attracted by the song, he by the sight of 

 birds; where the former would lie on a bank listening and 

 watching, his impulse, as being more pressed for time, is to 

 shoot the bird. He has a fair collection of stuffed birds which 

 (like the late Dr. Routh's books) has gradually overflowed his 

 study, extended into dining-room and passages, and is now 

 stealing into his bedrooms. It is noticeable, too, that whereas 

 the parson from conservative tendencies clings fondly to the 

 old Latin names wherewith birds were classed by Linnaeus in 

 the last century, the doctor, with wider and more liberal views, 

 prefers a brand new nomenclature. He professes also to be 

 able to read with pleasure, after a long day of visiting and per- 

 haps five hours in bed during the last three nights, an article in 

 the Ibis which to the uninitiated resembles a catalogue of 

 grotesque Latin names answering to nothing that he could re- 

 cognise " in the flesh." In the same manner have we known a 

 musical curate avow himself enraptured by merely poring over 

 the score of St. Paul in lodgings which were too small to admit 

 a piano. The contemplative but ignorant lover of birds stands 



