286 DECEMBER 



the robins desire for fat. Starlings, for example, are 

 particularly attracted to sewage farms, where they feed 

 on the fat deposits left in the clinker. Was it some such 

 observation that suggested to the famous Baron Burlepsch 

 his plum-pudding tree, which consisted, as to its founda 

 tion, of molten fat poured over a tree, artificial or 

 natural ? Nuts are full of fat and please particular birds, 

 especially the nuthatch, otherwise hard to attract. I have 

 had some success with a rough garden sieve into which 

 shelled nuts were inserted. Nuts placed in the crevices 

 of bark of a tree some fifteen yards from a neighbour s 

 window drew both the nuthatch and the greater spotted 

 woodpecker a glorious bird to watch. We are not all 

 so lucky. A nut that I put in the bark of a big acacia is 

 now a hazel tree of several inches in height, growing 

 parasitically on the spot ! So much, here and now, about 

 food. Water is very nearly as important, especially in 

 frost, when it is hardest to supply. 



4- 



The better part of the village is wont to attend the 

 Boxing Day meet of the hounds, held by tradition in 

 front of the country house. Folk are too numerous for 

 some of the too deeply engrooved members of the hunt 

 who enjoy the smallest possible field and regard any 

 pedestrian as an inferior being. He would probably 

 miscall the tail of both hound and fox ; and always 

 heads a fox where possible. Nevertheless the rider on 

 &quot; Shanks, his mare/ sees much that escapes those proud 

 people mounted on thoroughbred and hunter. They are 

 content with the grip of the knee, with the lively spring 

 of the hocks beneath them, and see everything through 

 the frame of the keen cocked ears in front of them, 



