The Minstrels of the Summer. 19 



regard for the protection of small birds ; people are beginning 

 to appreciate birds as proper adjuncts of rural scenery., and 

 the destructive propensities of the untaught are kept in check 

 by proprietors who value birds in trees more than birds in 

 cages. 



The supposed ornithological poverty of suburban districts 

 is mainly attributable to the infrequency of a habit of obser- 

 vation among the residents. People who believe that no more 

 select feathered visitants than sparrows ever do them the 

 honour of a call should adopt an agreeable method of putting 

 the matter to the test. Choose a time between the 1st of 

 May and the 20th of June, and to secure the best day let it be 

 the 1st of June, and on that day renounce the solicitations of 

 Morpheus. In other words, sit up all night, walk about the 

 garden, read a play of Euripides in a room overlooking the 

 woodiest prospect you have, and take care to keep the window 

 open. I confess that I set apart many nights during that 

 period to enjoy perfect stillness, broken only by the bark- 

 ing of dogs, the crowing of cocks, and the singing of feathered 

 minstrels. With a cup of good coffee, and Virgil's Georgics, 

 or a readable edition of Columella, better still the Psalms of 

 David, it is like adding a year to one's life, so intense is the 

 enjoyment of the coolness, the greenness, the music, and the 

 whispers of the wind. From 8 till 11 p.m. the concert is kept 

 up with unflagging vigour by thrushes, blackbirds, wrens, 

 blackcaps, and nightingales, the cuckoo adds his bass accom- 

 paniment or chorus. I have just seen the sun rise after one of 

 these nocturnal vigils, and I feel fresh : the dew is wet on my 

 beard ; I feel elastic, and should like to walk up a breezy hill, 

 had I not noted a few passages in books that I have turned 

 over, and to which I propose making reference. I have heard 

 the muttering of crickets and beetles in the privet hedge, seen 

 roosting thrushes change their places, heard a quarrel between 

 two sparrows cowering under a ledge of timber on the roof of 

 a shed, and counted the voices of nine species of birds between 

 midnight and 2 a.m. Within one hour from 11. 30p.m. tol2. 80a.m. 

 I heard the cuckoo, nightingale, thrush, woodlark, reed-wren, 

 whitethroat, willow -wren. Soon after 1 a.m. I heard, in addi- 

 tion to the foregoing, the chaffinch, the wren, and the chiff chaff, 

 and after two o'clock there was such a general mingling of 

 voices that it was possible only to distinguish the thrush, 

 cuckoo, chaffinch, and robin, whose utterances are so distinct 

 as to be at all times unmistakeable. Far away on the borders 

 of the New Forest, and among the crowded slopes of Hereford- 

 shire and Hertfordshire, I have at night heard the golden oriole, 

 the ring-ousel, the water-ousel, and the grey wagtail ; the last 

 to be seen as well as heard during moonlight at the midnight 



