MOOR-HENS IN HYDE PARK 



THE sparrow, like the poor, we have always with us, 

 and on windy days even the large-sized rook is 

 blown about the murkiness which does duty for sky 

 over London ; and on such occasions its coarse, 

 corvine dronings seem not unmusical, nor without 

 something of a tonic effect on our jarred nerves. 

 And here the ordinary Londoner has got to the end 

 of his ornithological list that is to say, his winter 

 list. He knows nothing about those wind-worn 

 waifs, the " occasional visitors " to the metropolis 

 the pilgrims to distant Meccas and Medinas that 

 have fallen, overcome by weariness, at the wayside ; 

 or have encountered storms in the great aerial sea, 

 and lost compass and reckoning, and have been 

 lured by false lights to perish miserably at the hands 

 of their cruel enemies* It may be true that gulls 

 are seen on the Serpentine, that woodcocks are 



flushed in Lincoln's Inn Fields, but the citizen who 



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