Ill Among the Birds in Wales 59 



their life last breeding season may after all have been 

 a happy one. But let me insist on it ouce more that, 

 though they may escape the farmer and the sports- 

 man, neither of whom is in those parts wantonly 

 vindictive, they cannot long survive the greed of the 

 trader in eggs ; and further, that the trader himself 

 can only be suppressed by a rigid self-denying 

 ordinance on the part of the private collector.^ 



But we must leave the rocky summits of the hills, 

 and descend, perhaps through very steep woodland, 

 to the winding valley with its road and river. In 

 some places the hills are clad almost to the very crown 

 with trees ; and not only with pine or larch, but here 

 and there with oaks of no great height, with a border 

 of ashes or sycamores on their last gentler mossy 

 slopes by the river. Beneath the trees is no great 

 luxuriance of grass, for the brake-fern here has it all 

 its own way, and covers the whole hill-side, except 

 where an occasional bit of rock juts out, in the 

 shelves and crannies of which a mossy turf is spread. 

 Could any place be a more pleasant and beautiful 

 home for wood-loving birds ? I have often noticed 

 that a steep slope, where trees are not too closely 

 packed for the sun to shine freely in among the 

 shadows, is always a favourite haunt. Was there not, 

 and is there not, the famous Hanger of Selborne, made 

 memorable for ever to English bird-lovers ? Another 



^ See Mr. Salter's note in the Zoologist for August 1893. 



