SOME JUNE NOTES 311 



eggs were taken from both nests by my game- 

 keeper friend and placed under fowls. 



I also noticed that the Yellow Bunting almost 

 invariably had a clutch of four eggs during 1906, 

 whereas I usually find three completes the clutch. 

 The Greater Whitethroat was especially common 

 in my neighbourhood during the Summer men- 

 tioned, and all the nests I located contained not 

 less than five eggs in each. One bird I missed 

 very much those beautiful June evenings, and 

 that was the Grasshopper Warbler, which seemed 

 to be so very plentiful — comparatively speaking 

 — during the previous Summer. I certainly saw 

 and heard the bird on several occasions during 

 1906 in Sussex, but in Hertfordshire it did not 

 seem nearly so well distributed as in 1905. 



June is the month of Roses, and although the 

 varieties in the garden suffered terribly from the 

 late frosts, storms of rain, hail, and snow, there 

 was, after all, a finer show than in 1905. The 

 bushes in my garden were one mass of blossom, 

 and even in our changeable English climate June 

 has still to be counted as the month of Roses and 

 of heavily-leafed trees and plants. I have never, 

 since I became an amateur rosarian, seen Rose 

 trees so blackened and the leaves cut up by the 

 frost and hail storms as in the year named, and 

 during early Summer it was positively dishearten- 

 ing to look at the bushes. Warm sunshine, gentle 



