BIRDS IN A VILLAGE 127 



case, the subject need not keep us longer from the 

 greenfinch — that is to say, my greenfinch, not another 

 man's. 



From morning until evening all around and about 

 the cottage, and out of doors whithersoever I bent 

 my steps, from the masses of deep green foliage, 

 sounded the perpetual airy prattle of these delightful 

 birds. One had the idea that the concealed vocalists 

 were continually meeting each other at Uttle social 

 gatherings, where they exchanged pretty loving 

 greetings, and indulged in a leafy gossip, inter- 

 spersed with occasional fragments of music, vocal 

 and instrumental ; now a long trill — a trilling, a 

 tinkling, a sweeping of one minute finger-tip over 

 metal strings as fine as gossamer threads — describe 

 it how you will, you cannot describe it ; then the 

 long, low, inflected scream, like a lark's throat-note 

 drawn out and inflected ; little chirps and chir- 

 ruping exclamations and remarks, and a soft warbled 

 note three or four or more times repeated, and 

 sometimes, the singer fluttering up out of the foliage 

 and hovering in the air, displaying his green and 

 yellow plumage while emitting these lovely notes ; 

 and again the trill, trill answering trill in different 

 keys ; and again the music scream, as if some un- 

 substantial being, fairy or wood nymph, had 

 screamed somewhere in her green hiding-place. 



In London one frequently hears, especially in 



