THE DAILY LIFE OF OUR FARM. U9 



every glance of sunlight, and feels it in every breeze. 

 There's Master Tom-Tit, the long-tailed, flirting with 

 his cousin, Miss Blue-Tit, whom he has taken in to 

 dinner upon a willow-spray, as he hops about, and 

 busies himself to pick out for her delicacies from under- 

 neath the bark ; while on the lower branches there's 

 quite a juvenile party of the small tit's fry. Two 

 young squirrels from their nest, which hangs like a ball 

 in a neighbouring birch-tree, have been gambolling 

 around the trunk, bobbing this way and that way, and 

 cutting over the tall box bushes, as if it were a race- 

 course, no more ruffling it than would a breath of 

 summer air. Then our industrious, lovely, nut-hatch has 

 returned too. She has gathered, and we trust enjoyed, 

 all the filberts we had pinned around the hole in which 

 she annually builds her nest. There's a rabbit too — the 

 gardener says, " Confound him ! " flicking his white tuft 

 contemptuously in view, as he deems it best to bolt 

 under the bough of the laurel fence at our approach. 

 Master Reynard we don't scent about, although during 

 the snow he made a frequent circuit of the very house, 

 and actually had the audacity to kill a hen-pheasant 

 close underneath the windows. A wood-pigeon, reared 

 from the nest last year, that got loose from the aviary 

 when the fat gardener went in to fetch a board one 

 day, and was not smart to close the door, hangs very 

 melancholy about the woods. She hopped so leisurely 

 beside me the other morning, that, not knowing of her 

 escape, I concluded she must be a wounded bird, and 

 tried fruitlessly to catch her. Since that, while a 

 pigeon-shooting match was going on in the meadows 

 below us, upon the other side of the river, she flew up 

 from somewhere below, and nestled as if for protection, 



