34 OXFORD : SPEING AND STJMMEK. 



is SO, we can show well enough even from Oxford alone. You 



will find Sedge-warblers all along the Cherwell and the Isis, 



wherever there is a bit of cover, and very often they will turn 



up where least expected ; in a corn-field for example, where I 



have seen them running up and down the corn-stalks as if they 



were their native reeds. But you must either know where to 



find the Reed-warbler, or find out by slow degrees. Parsons' 



Pleasure is the only place known to me where 



The Beed-warbler swung in a nest with her young, 

 Deep-sheltered and warm from the wind.' 



There is, however, in this case, at least a plausible answer to 

 Mr. Harting's question. Owing to the prime necessity of reeds 

 for the building of this deep-sheltered nest, which is swung 

 between several of them, kept firm by their centrifugal ten- 

 dency, yielding lovingly yet proudly to every blast of vrind 

 or current of water — owing to this necessity, the Eeed-warbler 

 declines to take up his abode in any place where the reeds are 

 not thick enough and tall enough to give a real protection to 

 himself and his brood. Now in the whole length of Isis between 

 Kennington'' and Godstow, and of Cherwell between its mouth 

 and Parsons' Pleasure, there is no reed-bed which answers all 

 the requirements of this little bird. Now and then, it is true, 

 they vrill leave the reeds for some other nesting-place ; one of 

 them sang away all the Summer Term of 1884 in the bushes 



' Mr. Courthope'a Paradise of Birds. No one who loyes birds or poetry 

 should fail to read Mr. Buskin's commentary on the chorus &om which 

 these lines are taken, in Love's Meinie, p. 1 39 and foil. 



' Unless it be in the westernmost branch, which runs at the foot of the 

 Berkshire hills. 



