From Fox's Earth 



go south, somewhere in Africa. Next year only 

 a pair are in the willows. Does it mean that 

 this is the annual waste of life ? Out of every 

 seven only two are left? Or do the young go 

 elsewhere ? Over the whole burn one season's 

 warblers are not greater than another. Whence 

 the mortality? It is mainly in the young. Buffeted 

 by winds on the passage, or heedless of risks, 

 do they lose touch with the sage guides of the 

 flight ? 



This is our Scots warbler. Each patch of 

 marsh lodges its summer pair. On the water- 

 courses which network the land, it is familiar ; 

 save only where some wilful bend has left a dry 

 place. I have not yet been where it was absent. 

 So rich in warblers is the south that it may well 

 afford us, who have so few, this one all to our- 

 selves. It has been named the Scots nightingale 

 not because it sings so well, but because it is 

 our only night-singing bird. The peasant, in 

 the country cottage near where water is, hears it, 

 on his pillow, as a not ungrateful lullaby. From 

 its perch on the willow it catches the step of 

 the late wanderer by the streamside. It chatters 

 to him as he passes, scolding, with its harshest 

 notes, that he is out at such untimely hours. 

 Who has not gone down in the delightful dim 

 coolness just to hear, and could not point out 

 the very turn in the path where the first greeting 

 note will sound ; and, when the scolding stopped, 



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