152 THE NATURAL HISTORY 



distance. The Welch call it pen y llwyn, the head or master of 

 the coppice. He suffers no magpie, jay, or blackbird, to enter 

 the garden where he haunts ; and is, for the time, a good guard 

 to the new-sown legumens. In general he is very successful in 

 the defence of his family : but once I observed in my garden, 

 that several magpies came determined to storm the nest of a 

 missel-thrush : the dams defended their mansion with great 

 vigour, and fought resolutely pro oris Sf focis ; but numbers at 

 last prevailed, they tore the nest to pieces, and swallowed the 

 young alive. 



In the season of nidification the wildest birds are comparatively 

 tame. Thus the ring-dove breeds in my fields, though they are 

 continually frequented ; and the missel-thrush, though most shy 

 and wild in the autumn and winter, builds in my garden close to 

 a walk where people are passing all day long.^ 



Wall-fruit abounds with me this year ; but my grapes, that 

 used to be forward and good, are at present backward beyond 

 all precedent : and this is not the worst of the story ; for the 

 same ungenial weather, the same black cold solstice, has injured 

 the more necessary fruits of the earth, and discoloured and blighted 

 our wheat. The crop of hops promises to be very large. 



Frequent returns of deafness incommode me sadly, and half 

 disqualify me for a naturalist ; for, when those fits are upon me, 

 I lose all the pleasing notices and little intimations arising from 

 rural sounds ; and May is to me as silent and mute with respect 

 to the notes of birds, &c. as August. My eyesight is, thank God, 

 quick and good ; but with respect to the other sense, I am, at 

 times, disabled : 



" And Wisdom at one entrance quite shut out." ^ 



' [Bell notes on this passage that these two species still keep up their familiarity 

 with the same spots. The ringdove builds in the grounds near the house, and the 

 missel-thrush "has its nest every year in the spot indicated in the text". (As I 

 write this note, a missel-thrush is building in an apple-tree close to my garden-walk, 

 and not twenty yards from the house.)] 



^ [Paradise Lost, iii. , 50.] 



