JANUARY 7 



This has been the case to an unusual degree in the 

 autumns of 1894, 1895, and 1896. In 1894 Mr. Stanley 

 Morris counted, in the neighbourhood of Bognor, 

 Chichester, and Fishbourne, one hundred and thirty- 

 eight swallows and martins during November, and 

 twelve swallows and nine house-martins during Decem- 

 ber. That was, indeed, an unusually mild autumn 

 the preface to the great frost but in the last week 

 of October 1895, Tweedside was sheeted with snow, 

 and a bitter nor'easter howled for more than a week. 

 Yet at the beginning of November there might have 

 been seen the uncommon sight of swallows hawking 

 daily over the snow in pursuit of bluebottles. All 

 these birds must have perished in the end. 



II 



The fortitude of birds in resisting cold so long as 

 they do not run short of food is very remarkable. On 



one of the early days of what afterwards 



> -i The power 



proved to be the memorable frost of 1895, of Birds to 

 I watched some wildfowl on a half-frozen endure cold 

 lake in Scotland. It was a day to congeal human 

 marrow ; it was freezing hard under an iron sky, and 

 a blinding blizzard flew before a roaring south-easter. 

 There were several hundreds of mallard, widgeon, and 

 teal, with pochards and tufted ducks, and there was 

 shelter for all in the bay behind a wooded island. A 

 few of them took advantage of it, but rather by chance 

 than by choice, it seemed, for by far the larger number 

 of them sat outside for hours on the ice, in the teeth 



