46 The Naturalist in Silurid. 



firstj the parent bird — the mother, of course — having re- 

 mained within the cavity till caught, a thing so unusual. 

 There seems no other way of accounting for it than by 

 the supposition that she was at the time in the act of 

 feeding her young, and the noise made by them hindered 

 her hearing and noting the approach of the enemy. That 

 were intelligible enough; but the still stranger fact of 

 the nestlings knowing their way back to the tree where 

 they had been hatched, would seem one of those instances 

 of instinct which the philosopher vainly struggles to ex- 

 plain. Unless it were pure instinct, the only explanation 

 probable is, that they had been out of the hole and down 

 upon the earth before, while being taught their first steps 

 in the art of climbing. 



In the shires bordering central and South Wales, we 

 have all four of the accredited British species of Wood- 

 peckers : the Great Black {Picus martius), the Green 

 (P. viridis), the Great Spotted (P. major), and the Lesser 

 Spotted (P. minor). This might be expected from the 

 wooded character of many districts in the ancient border- 

 land of the " Marches." 



Of course, the four species are far from being in like 

 numbers ; the Great Black is so rare that many ornitholo- 

 gists even doubt its existence in any part of England. 

 It has been observed, however, and in my own grounds 

 in South Herefordshire, myself the observer. In the 

 summer of 1880 a pair passed over my head, one flying 

 behind the other at an interval of a hundred yards or so. 

 They lit in a tall linden tree near the house, only to stay 

 in it for a few seconds ; then continued their up-and- 

 down flight towards some hanging woods beyond, where 

 I lost sight of and never saw them again. Mr. Chapman 

 also, curator of the Free Library Museum in Hereford, 



