DECEMBER 201 



before Christmas, but December 22, 1902, was such a 

 day. In the morning, windows that had been closed 

 overnight were moist on the outside, and when they 

 were thrown open a warm, balmy air came into the 

 rooms. With the air came the persistent voice of 

 the hedge-sparrow in the shrubbery, singing his 

 simple, twisting trill over and over again. Presently 

 he dropped from his singing perch, halfway up a 

 small larch, to the path, where his wife was pattering 

 along with her little ruddy feet, microscopically ex- 

 amining the gravel at every hop. Though there is 

 little enough of personal adornment about a male 

 hedge-sparrow, except a bluish shade of grey on the 

 head, this one exhibited all the conscious pride of the 

 commanding and protecting sex in the way that he 

 took precedence of his wife, and, with wings officiously 

 flicking at every movement, hopped just a foot in 

 front of her down the path. When a hedge-sparrow 

 adopts these manners, it needs no gift of prophecy 

 to foretell that there will be a hedge-sparrow's nest 

 thereabouts later. 



THE LEAF-BUDS SWELL. 



Of course, it is absurd to think of spring and 

 birds' nests at Christmas.* Months hence we shall 

 be watching spring's false starts in her annual obstacle 

 race. But no depth of snow or thickness of ice here- 

 after, no bitter winds or blighting fogs will altogether 

 take back the advantage gained in the closing weeks 

 of a mild December. Look at the larch, where the 

 hedge-sparrow was singing. Already its twigs, so 



* Yet a thrush was sitting upon eggs early in the following January. 



