6 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



passed were busily engaged picking the wayside flowers. There 

 is more in this than meets the eye, I thought ; so we stopped and 

 asked an intelligent-looking boy of apparently some eight or nine 

 years of age if he or his companions ever meddled with the birds' 

 nests. Quick as possible came back the answer, " Oh, no ; we're 

 not allowed to." And on further investigation I rejoiced to find 

 that such was absolutely the case, the children in the village 

 schools thereabouts being very rightly taught the cruelty of 

 an indiscriminate and irrational destruction of birds' nests 

 and eggs. 



This species is an indefatigable songster, and probably if it 

 were less frequently heard in our gardens and orchards, we 

 should set greater store by its music — regard its varied and 

 stirring notes with greater favour. I have heard it sing every 

 month in the year at such times as the weather has been mild 

 and open. I heard one give forth a few sweet notes at a quarter 

 to eight on two consecutive mornings in the first week in January 

 in the year 1888, and another bird sang almost every day in my 

 garden throughout the November of 1893. As is the case with 

 most of our feathered songsters, however, the weather plays an 

 all-important part in the " to be or not to be " question of an 

 open-air vernal concert; nevertheless, the Mistle-Thrush must be 

 quoted as a notable exception to this rule, and as one not to be 

 deterred by storms and gales from chanting its pleasing lay. 

 Alike in fair weather and foul, and at its appointed season, the 

 " Stormcock " raises its voice, perched aloft amidst the topmost 

 branches — rather preferring, I have observed, to station itself in 

 an isolated tree either by the roadside or in a hedgerow a field 

 away for the purpose. 



The Song-Thrush is a more or less migratory species; it 

 pairs early in the spring, and the nest, which is quite unique, is 

 placed in a variety of situations ; but because I once discovered 

 one on the ground in the Kectory plantation at Skeffington is 

 not conceived an adequate reason for suggesting that that is one 

 of its normal situations. We talk glibly enough about the 

 absurdity of drawing conclusions from single instances, and yet 

 I can never get out of my head reading in some book or other 

 intended for the instruction of simple tyros like myself that Nut- 

 hatches' nests were to be looked for in haystacks \ I can only 



