FINCHES. 43 



" Far different is the course adopted in the Greek Islands, 

 for so soon as the middle of October arrives, may you expect 

 vast nights of thrushes, with which are mingled a few of the 

 missel thrush (called here on the principle of everything 

 large coming from Africa, the Barbary thrush). When it is 

 fully ascertained that these birds have been seen in numbers, 

 which is always the case by the 20th of October, then every 

 one is bitten with the desire to go into the olive-groves to 

 ' whistle for thrushes.' As this is rather a curious proceed- 

 ing, and opens up a new phase in thrush character, I cannot 

 do better, perhaps, than describe a morning expedition in 

 one of the Ionian Isles, on which occasion I was inducted 

 into the ceremonies. It was towards the end of October 

 that I started for the fern-covered, woodcock-haunted glades 

 of Gorino, in company with a Greek gentleman skilled in 

 ' bird murder.' How well I remember how gloriously, the 

 morning dawned, the early grey shadows softening the 

 harsh outlines of the forts under whose guns we passed, ere 

 winding up the steep hill upon which the picturesque little 

 village of Potamo is placed. From this elevated spot the 

 view was magnificent; far away below us lay numberless 

 olive groves, over the tops of whose trees could be seen the 

 grey still waters of the harbour, and the shores of the 

 Emarantine Island now gilded here and there with the awaken- 

 ing beams of the sun, which was driving the vapour in clouds 

 from the bosom of the sea. Salvador's high crest yet 

 wreathed in mists ; its sombre slopes clothed with the ever 

 verdant holly and ilex, while it seemed yet summer, so calm 

 and warm was the air, its silence unbroken save by the 

 mournful whistle of the curlew on the sandbars below, or 

 the harsh chattering notes of the wary jay in the thick trees 

 above us ; around and about were mossy little dells thickly 

 clothed with high bushes of myrtle and laurel, the velvet 

 sward around luxuriating in the dew that our hasty 

 passage brushed from off the brown tangle of herbage 

 which served as shelter for the ^sby woodcock. On we 



