I a oxford: autumn and wintee. 



Wagtail, for its tail is nearly an inch longer than that of any 

 other species ; or the Brook -Wagtail, because it so rarely leaves 

 the bed of the stream it haunts. All other Wagtails may 

 be seen in meadows, ploughed fields, and uplands ; but though 

 I have repeatedly seen this one within the last year in England, 

 Wales, Ireland, and Switzerland, I never but once saw it away 

 from the water, and then it was for the moment upon a high 

 road in Dorsetshire, and within a few yards of a brook and pool. 

 Those who wish to identify it must remember its long tail and 

 its love of water, and must also look out for the beautiful 

 sulphur yellow of its under parts; in the spring both male 

 and female have a black chin and throat, like our com- 

 mon Pied Wagtail. No picture, and no stuffed specimen, can 

 give the least idea of what the bird is like : the specimens 

 in our Oxford Museum look very ' sadly,' as the villagers say ; 

 you must see the living bird in perpetual motion, the little 

 feet running swiftly, the long tail ever gently flickering up 

 and down. How can you successfully draw or stuff a bird 

 whose most remarkable feature is never for a moment stiU ? 



Let us now return towards Oxford, looking into the Parks 

 on our way. The Curators of the Parks, not less generous to 

 the birds than to mankind, have provided vast stores of food for 

 the former, in the numbers of birches and conifers which 

 flourish under their care. They, or their predecessors who 

 stocked the plantations, seem to have had the particular 

 object of attracting those delightful little north-country birds 

 the Lesser EedpoUs, for they have planted every kind of tree 

 in whose seeds they find a winter subsistence. Whether they 



