SUBVEY OF TEE PABKS : WEST LONDON 163 



The will to neither strive nor cry, 

 The power to feel with others give ! 



Calm, calm me more ! nor let me die 

 Before I have begun to live. 



In these vast gardens and parks, v^ith large 

 trees, shrubberies, wide green spaces, and lakes, 

 there should be ample room for many scores of 

 the delightful songsters that are noM^ vanishing 

 or have already vanished. And much might be 

 done, at a very small cost, to restore these 

 species, and to add others. 



One of the first and most important steps to 

 be taken in order to make the central parks a 

 suitable home for wild birds, especially of the 

 songsters, both resident and migratory, that 

 nest on or near the ground, is the exclusion of 

 the army of cats that hunt every night and all 

 night long in them. This subject will be dis- 

 cussed more fully in another chapter. 



Proper breeding - places are also greatly 

 wanted — close shrubberies and rockeries such 

 as we find at Battersea and Finsbury Parks. 

 The existing shrubberies give no proper shelter. 

 In planting them the bird's need of privacy was 

 not considered; the space allowed to them 

 is too small, the species of plants that birds 



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