MOOR-HENS IN HYDE PARK 



The sparrow, like the poor, we have always with us, 



and on windy days even the large-sized rook is 



blown about the murkiness which does duty for sky 



over London ; and on such occasions its coarse, 



corvine dronings seem not unmusical, nor without 



something of a tonic effect on our jarred nerves. 



And here the ordinary Londoner has got to the end 



of his ornithological list — ^that is to say, his winter 



list. He knows nothing about those wind-worn 



waifs, the " occasional visitors ** to the metropolis 



— ^the pilgrims to distant Meccas and Medinas that 



have fallen, overcome by weariness, at the wayside ; 



or have encountered storms in the great aerial sea, 



and lost compass and reckoning, and have been 



lured by false lights to perish miserably at the hands 



of their cruel enemies. It may be true that gulls 



are seen on the Serpentine, that woodcocks are 



flushed in Lincoln's Inn Fields, but the citizen who 



i6i 



