94 WILD LU-E AT HOME. 



generally be met with in any suburban back garden, 

 where a fair degree of quiet and a supply of food 

 prevail. We sometimes place our camera on a 

 rough wooden grocer's box in the garden, and 

 focussing a few pea -sticks on which birds are in 

 the habit of alighting, cover it over with an old 

 sack, and throwing a few crumbs down close by, 

 retire indoors, with the ball of the pneumatic tube 

 in hand, to wait. The house-sparrows on page 93 

 were photographed in this way, and when the study 

 had been made, one of my little daughters, a 

 child of six, having heard of catching birds by 

 placing a pinch of salt on their tails, thought that 

 she would try her hand at capturing some of 

 the dickies. Procuring a supply of salt and some 

 bread-crumbs, she placed a quantity of each in 

 such situations that a bird engaged upon eating 

 the one would be likely to touch the other with his 

 tail, and retired indoors to wait and watch results. 

 Our servant, a big Lincolnshire lass, took a great 

 deal of interest in the matter, and very gravely 

 asked my wife how a pinch of salt on a bird's tail 

 could secure it did it fascinate the poor little thing ? 



When snow is on the ground we always feed 

 the birds liberally, and in photographing them hide 

 the camera beneath a white sheet or tablecloth. 



There is a great deal of very interesting natural- 

 history work still to be done in the direction of 

 studying the tracks of wild creatures in the snow. 

 I remember with what pleasure, when a lad, I 



