10 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
honey-dew—their milk, butter and cheese? Such 
flocks and herds they do keep and tend on oak 
trees, as I discovered in Harewood Forest; and 
I wish that readers of this chapter who live in or 
near a pine wood and are the happy possessors of 
ladders forty or fifty feet long will make some 
further investigation into the matter. 
My conclusion for the present is that wood- 
pigeons and other birds that breed in the pines 
do nct build their nests in trees used by the ants. 
Let us now follow the fortunes of the young 
sparrow-hawks, bred in a wood where people 
inhabit. 
I watched them day by day, and, gradually, as 
their fluffy coat was replaced by feathers, and 
their lumpish appearance changed to the sharp- 
cut hawk figure, they grew more adventurous and 
would mount upon a branch accessible from the 
nest, the maturest bird taking the lead, the others, 
one by one, slowly and cautiously following. 
Finally, all four would be on the branch at a dis- 
tance of six to ten inches apart, the one nearest 
the nest being always the least hawk-like in appear- 
ance—more lumpish and with more down on it 
than the others. 
One morning in September I found the nest 
empty; the young had been persuaded to leave 
for good early that morning. Just how they had 
been persuaded—feelingly, perhaps with sudden 
smart blows—it would have been a great thing to 
witness, but I had never looked for it on account 
