30 MY NATURE NOTEBOOK. 



knife-blades, on the third day of the frost. The field- 

 fares began to suffer, too, then, and a walk through 

 the snow-covered fields was made melancholy by the 

 sight of these poor birds, too weak to fly, and hopping 

 clumsily, like lame frogs, out of the way of your 

 footsteps. Now and then you would find one unable 

 to move at all, with wings and tail half spread upon 

 the snow, and its eyes already growing dim. If you 

 picked it up you could hardly believe that its bones 

 and feathers could be so light. It seems, somehow, 

 doubly sad that so fine a bird for the fieldfare, 

 viewed in the hand, with its auburn mantle and 

 delicate, contrasted shades of slate and grey, black 

 and buff, is much more beautiful than one thinks from 

 merely seeing them scattered about the fields, looking 

 like dark thrushes should come to us across the seas 

 for sanctuary in winter, only to be killed by the frost 

 of a treacherous February. 



THE MOST USEFUL PLANTS. 



For the frost came at a dangerous time for the 

 birds, after all the berries which ripened in autumn 

 had been eaten, and before the ivy berries were really 

 fit to eat. In the southern counties, perhaps, the ivy 

 may have been forward enough to maintain the birds 

 during the short spell of severe weather ; but in the 

 east and north only a few of the topmost clusters of 

 berries in sunny positions could be eaten. It is 

 only at special times that one realizes the value of 

 three of our commonest plants the hawthorn, and 

 the bramble and the ivy in sustaining the enormous 

 bird-population of the British Isles in winter. Others 



