THROUGH THE YEAR 23 



apart from common whitethroat. True, he has the 

 whitethroat jabber to begin his song. It may be in a 

 little lower key, but it is the same characteristic 

 jabber which the other flings out on the wing in those 

 gay frisks over the roadside hedge. 



Now mark the parting for ever of whitethroat 

 ways. The common whitethroat begins and ends 

 with jabber ; the lesser whitethroat ends with a 

 loud shake of bubbling note that is utterly unlike 

 the note of any other English warbler. How came 

 the lesser whitethroat by this songshake ? Nothing 

 in its way of life to-day, nothing in the hedgerow and 

 coppice company into which it is thrown, gives the 

 clue. Its fellow lodgers are the same as the com- 

 mon whitethroat's. There are several hedgerow 

 birds with a song-shake that may remind us of the 

 lesser whitethroat's the cirl bunting, or the green- 

 finch even. But they are neighbours of the common 

 whitethroat, too. Moreover, I see not the smallest 

 reason to suppose that whitethroat learned from 

 cirl any more than cirl from whitethroat. 



Looking at the two whitethroats, and thinking 

 of them, I doubt not they had a common ancestor ; 

 but my mind is blank as to whether the smaller 

 whitethroat pattern struck off from the larger, 

 or the larger from the smaller. Indeed, may it 

 not be that, though they came through the same 

 forbear, neither is child of the other ? However 

 this be, here they are to-day, so near in most 

 things replicas, to look at, save for a trifling 

 difference in size, identical in most of their habits, 



