ORIGINAL SKETCHES OF BRITISH BIRDS. 7 



presume it was thought that to this grotesquely aberrant situation 

 for a Nuthatch's nest — the original of which, by-the-by, is to be 

 seen in the South Kensington Museum — the Latin adage ex uno 

 disce omnes would most fitly apply. Let all young ornithologists 

 be on their guard against the tendency to generalize from a single 

 and perhaps exceptional experience. Surely I have some memory 

 of a man who once alleged he had shot a Hare at ninety yards, 

 and who wrote proclaiming the feat in a well-known journal 

 devoted to records of sport, and who argued therefrom that he 

 could always kill Hares at ninety yards ! Unless I am dreaming, 

 the gentleman with the long bow was somewhat roughly handled 

 by subsequent critics of both his feat and logic in the same 

 journal. The writer once dropped a Grouse dead at ninety 

 yards — a cross shot — that had been previously "peppered"; it 

 was a precious fluke, a stray corn just chancing to penetrate the 

 brain ; but many another has been missed at a third of the 

 distance since. It was on the beautiful Kildonan moors, in 

 Sutherlandshire, that the shot was made and measured. 



However, the Song-Thrush is my theme. With regard to its 

 eggs, the only abnormal-sized varieties I have met with have 

 invariably been on the small scale. I have also found them on 

 rare occasions unspotted, and in one instance, in Herefordshire, 

 I took a beautiful clutch of five with blood-red markings upon 

 them. The characteristic nest of this species is too well known 

 to need my making any reference to it. 



The Kedwing- (Turdus iliacus). 

 For a close inspection and prolonged study of the Eedwing 

 there is hardly a period more suitable than that of frost and 

 snow, especially when a heavy fall of the latter has covered the 

 ground to the depth of several inches, and the grass of the green 

 fields has been hidden from our view for many days. Then it is 

 that the poor birds, with their normal food supply cut short, and 

 pinched with cold and hunger, draw to the roadside hedges for 

 the purpose of feeding on the winter berries which, in mild open 

 weather, they apparently set less store by, except on first arrival. 

 During a severe spell of weather I have gone close up to as many 

 as ten or a dozen in a low bush, their attitude crouching and 

 despondent, and they have shown neither fear nor inclination to 



