cuckoo-pint {arum) was frequently scratched out of 

 the dry banks of hedges, and eaten in severe snowy 

 weather. After observing, with some exactness, my- 

 self, and getting others to do the same, we found it 

 was the thrush kind that searched it out. The root 

 of the arum is remarkably warm and pungent. 



Our flocks of female chaffinches have not yet 

 forsaken us. The blackbirds and thrushes are very 

 much thinned down by that fierce weather in Jan- 

 uary. 



In the middle of February I discovered, in my 

 tall hedges, a little bird that raised my curiosity ; it 

 was of that yellow-green colour that belongs to the 

 salicaria kind, and I think was soft-billed. It was no 

 parus ; and was too long and too big for the golden- 

 crowned w^ren, appearing most like the largest wil- 

 low-wren. It hung sometimes with its back down- 

 wards, but never continuing one moment in the same 

 place. I shot at it, but it was so desultory that I 

 missed my aim. 



I wonder that the stone-curlew, Charadrius oedic- 

 nemus, should be mentioned by writers as a rare bird : 

 it abounds in all the campaign parts of Hampshire 

 and Sussex, and breeds, I think, all the summer, hav- 

 ing young ones, I know, very late in the autumn. 

 Already they begin clamouring in the evening. 

 They cannot, I think, with any propriety be called, 

 as they are by Mr. Ray, dwellers about streams or 



ponds, circa aquas versantes ; for with us, by day at 



60 



