April 



hedgerow, or especially if the stone be supported in 

 the hedge itself, a song-thrush's nest is all but certain 

 to be found near. This stone the bird uses as an 

 anvil, bringing to it any devoted snail it encounters. 

 One I recently watched took the shell in its beak, 

 by the opening, and repeatedly dashed it sideways 

 against the tiles lining the garden walk with such 

 force that the sound reached me at a distance of 

 forty yards. I have seen stones among the sandhills 

 at St. Anne's-on-the-Sea (where snails abound) which 

 were veritable shambles from this cause, the ground 

 around them being covered with the fragments of 

 hundreds of shells. 



A certain company of wrens which was always 

 to be found among a tangle of bramble and dead 

 wood in one of our lanes, have just returned to their 

 old quarters, and the cock has notified the fact by 

 the vigorous song which I had missed for several 

 months past. Whatever wrens in general may be 

 supposed to do during the winter months, these 

 wrens changed their quarters late last year, and have 

 reappeared in them on the 23rd April. 



If Dr. Watts' " busy bee " ever chances upon the 

 common wren, the latter will probably open his mind 

 on the subject of short cuts to immortality, and the 

 obvious advantage of bearing a name beginning with 

 an alliterative " b." I would not be held to begrudge 

 the bee his well-earned distinction, but only to claim 

 for the little, homely, work-a-day wren the merit of 

 improving each hour shining or otherwise with 



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