6 THE ORNITHOLOGIST. 



course. As I drove out to the Basilica di S. Paolo, I saw 

 Crested Larks, and the Church was surrounded with House 

 Martins. 



Travelling northwards, and leaving the broad Campagna, 

 we entered a more varied country, with cork woods and an 

 undergrowth of cistus or bracken, rough ground dotted with 

 cork trees, and golden flowered pastures. Crested Larks were 

 the only birds I had noted up to this time, but hereabouts I saw 

 Magpies, Carrion Crows, and a Buzzard flying low and close 

 to the train. The scenery near and past Piza is so lovely and 

 varied, that perhaps it is not wonderful that I find no birds 

 noted in my journal as seen that afternoon. 



The 24th I spent in Tornio. Again a noble city, and again 

 many Swifts. Our kind and courteous distinguished Honorary 

 Member of the British Ornithologists' Union residing here, 

 showed me the birds in the splendidly housed Royal Zoological 

 Museum during the heat of the early afternoon, and I spent 

 there some most interesting and instructive hours. There 

 were several local specimens of Anthus cervinus, which occurs 

 in numbers in some years, but not at all in others. Both 

 Saxicola stapazina and S. melanoleuca occur, and both Ring 

 Ouzels (M. torquata and M. alpestris). The birds are beauti- 

 fully arranged for convenience of seeing them — -facing the 

 observer instead of broadside on to him as is usually the case. 

 In the morning I had a hot walk along the (then) muddy river 

 Po, under fine rows of plane, poplar, acacia, &c, and then 

 along meadows with mulberry trees, acacia thickets, &c, 

 seeing twenty-one species of birds. By far the most interest- 

 ing, to me at least, was the Lesser Grey Shrike (Lanius minor). 

 An adult (possibly I saw both adults) with a distinctly rosy 

 flush on the breast, was feeding two dull-coloured young in the 

 tops of some poplars by the river, flying to the gardens and 

 haygrass near at hand for food. I understand that this bird is 

 not common in the vicinity of Tornio. Had it been otherwise 

 I should have considered that I subsequently watched two 

 more adults in the meadows lower down the river, perched on 

 mulberries, willows, &c. As it is, perhaps I encountered the 

 same bird twice, albeit those I saw were at some little distance 

 apart. The Lesser Grey Shrike is a bold and thoroughly 



