TREE-WAHBLEES. 25 



covered.' ^ Nothing but a personal acquaintance — a friendship, 



as I must call it in my own case — ^with these little birds, as 



they live their every-day life among us, will suffice to fix the 



individuality of each species in the mind ; not even the best 



plates in a book, or the faded and lifeless figures in a museum. 



You may shoot and dissect them, and study them as you would 



study and label a set of fossils : but a bird is a living thing, 



and you will never really know him tUl you fully understand 



how he lives. 



Let us imagine ourselves taking a stroU into the Parks with 



the object of seeing these eight birds, not as skeletons, but as 



living realities. The first to present themselves to eye and ear 



will be the two species of the second group, which may 



roughly be described (so far at least as England is concerned) 



as containing Tree-warblers. From the tall trees in St. John's 



Gardens, before we reach the Museum, we are certain on any 



tolerably warm day to hear the Willow-warbler, which has been 



the last few years extremely abundant; in Oxford alone there 



must have been two or three hundred pairs in the spring of 1885. 



From the same trees is also pretty sure to come ringing the two 



notes of the Chiff-chaff, which is a less abundant bird, but one 



that makes its presence more obvious. Let us pause here a 



moment to make our ideas clear about these two. We may justly 



take them first, as they are the earliest of their group to arrive 



in England. 



' The three species were the Wood-warbler, Phylloscopus sibilatrix 

 (Beehst.), Willow-warbler, Ph. troohilus (Linn.), and Chiflf-chaff, Ph. 

 collybita (Viell.). Markwick declares that he conld not distinguish the first 

 of these from the other two. 



