3930 Birds. 



The above list refers to wild birds alone, or I might add to them 

 the pea-fowl, which is occasionally seen to change to a white dress, 

 an instance of which has occurred in my immediate neighbourhood : 

 and the common hen, whose strange and periodical alternations of a 

 snowy and a sable dress are recorded (Zool. 667, 726). But domes- 

 tication, we well know, is the cause of many strange freaks in the 

 colour of plumage. Thus, from the gray lag goose is descended our 

 domestic goose, whose dress is more often white than any other colour: 

 and Yarrell tells us that from the wild duck are descended two white 

 varieties of domestic ducks. In the case of pigeons, too, descended 

 from the rock dove, what a variety of colours has not domestication 

 produced ! But these are scarcely parallel cases ; we cannot put wild 

 and domesticated birds side by side, and apply the same arguments to 

 both ; for as our cultivated garden flowers bear no resemblance to their 

 wild ancestors, or our grafted fruit-trees to the stocks whence they first 

 came, so our domesticated birds soon lose all characteristics of their 

 original forefathers. 



Alfred Charles Smith. 



Yatesbury Rectory, Calne, 

 June 30, 1853. 



Note on the Singing of Birds in Spring and Summer in Ireland. — In the spring 1 , 

 choose one of those calm, clear, frosty days we so often have towards the end of Fe- 

 bruary: — not a breath abroad; a dead unearthly stillness in the air; a clear blue sky 

 overhead ; a sun shorn of his heat, but not of his brightness. Now the wren revels, 

 singing on the top of some bush, or darting from bough to bough with quivering 

 wings ; the robin pours out all his soul ; the lark, as the poet hath it, — 

 " Higher still and higher, from the earth now springeth, 

 Like a cloud of fire the deep blue he wingeth, 

 And singing still doth soar, and soaring ever singeth ; " 

 the thrush excels iu melody ; the tender fauvette dares to trust himself with song on 

 some spray, all diamond-tipped by the frost ; the yellow hammer utters his spring 

 strain ; while in the tops of the fir-trees the various tits keep up an incessant sawing ; 

 and between whiles, from some deep sheltered glade, the blackbird's mellow note is 

 heard. For summer songsters, choose we a day opposite in many characters to this — 

 a true summer's day — a sun almost vertical, a sky cloudless, or, at least, its azure 

 broken but by a few small fleeces of a snowy whiteness, not a breath stirring, a blue 

 glimmering haze, which might almost be handled, rising in waves all over the coun- 

 try; all the insect tribes disporting and dancing in the sun's beams; a balmy lazy feel 

 in the air, a stilly calmness all around. Then take your station in the gorge of some 

 mountain stream, the sides of the hill clad with trees, the streams fringed with bushes 

 and brambles; on its banks, meadows studded with occasional tufts of yellow furze— 

 from some rock in the stream you will hear the soft low song of the dipper, and the 



