a OXFORD : AUTUMN AND WINTER, 



who tas not often time or strength to take long rambles in the 

 country round us, it is astonishing how much of the beauty, the 

 habits, and the songs of birds may be learnt within the city 

 itself, or in its immediate precincts. 



The fact is, that for several obvious reasons, Oxford is almost 

 a I'aradise of birds. All the conditions of the neighbourhood, 

 as it is now, are favourable to them. The three chief requisites 

 of the life of most birds are food, water, and some kind of cover. 

 For food, be they insect-eaters, or grub-eaters, they need never 

 lack near Oxford. Our vast expanse of moist alluvial meadow — 

 unequalled at any other point in the Thames valley — is extra- 

 ordinarily productive of grubs and flies, as it is of other things 

 unpleasant to man. Anyone can verify this for himself who 

 will walk along the Isis on a warm summer evening, or watch 

 the Sand-martins as he crosses the meadows to Hincksey. 

 Snails too abound ; no less than 93 species have been collected 

 and recorded by a late pupil of mine. The ditches in all the 

 water-meadows are teeming with fresh-water mollusks, and I 

 have seen them dying by hundreds when left high and dry in 

 a sultry season. Water of course is everywhere ; the fact that 

 our city was built at the confluence of Isis and Cherwell 

 has had a good deal of influence on its bird-life. But after 

 all, as far as the city itself is concerned, it is probably the 

 conservative tranquillity and the comfortable cover of the 

 gardens and parks that has chiefly attracted the birds. I fancy 

 there is hardly a town in Europe of equal size where such 

 favourable conditions are offered them, unless it be one of the 

 old-fashioned well-timbered kind, such as Wiesbaden, Bath,- 



