306 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



with meadow-sweet ; but I could see no sign there last year of 

 anything but our usual birds. We had no record of the living 

 and singing bird as yet in this county. 



On Whitsunday last (June 5th) I was passing this same 

 osier-bed, when I was struck by fragments of a song which at 

 once recalled the Marsh Warbler to my memory. The osiers had 

 not been cut in the winter, owing to the owner's reluctance to pay 

 more for cutting than he can get by selling, and in a great part 

 of the two and a half acres the stems were already twice my 

 height, thickly crowded, and beset with a very close undergrowth 

 of long grass, marigolds, and meadow-sweet, &c. I could not 

 see the bird, but I felt pretty sure of the song. I had to go back 

 to Oxford that night, but the following Thursday evening I con- 

 trived to play truant, and the next morning (June 10th), three 

 years to a day after my first acquaintance with the bird at 

 Meiringen, at 8 a.m. I penetrated into the osier-bed, and spent 

 a long time there in a very hot sun. I was well rewarded by 

 quite as wonderful a display of mimicry as I had heard at Meirin- 

 gen or Stauzstadt. This bird completely deceived me once with 

 the song of the Tree Pipit, and constantly imitated the Lark, 

 the Swallow, and others ; and though I could only obtain a 

 momentary look at him owing to the height of the osiers, I came 

 away fully convinced that I had found the Marsh Warbler in 

 England at last. It was not only the mimicry, — for a lively 

 Sedge Warbler will of course often come out with other birds' 

 notes in the course of his incessant rattle : it was the sweet clear 

 tone of the voice, with its rapid changes, its sudden stoppages, 

 and its comparatively rare lapses into sounds that could be 

 called grating or sibilant. 



Early on Monday, the 13th, I brought over from Oxford a 

 young friend, Mr. H. C. Playne, who knows well the songs and 

 habits of all our common Warblers. I sent him down alone to 

 the osiers while I went to get some breakfast, and joined him in 

 half-an-hour, curious to see what impression the song had made 

 on him. I found him listening to imitations of the Tree Pipit, and 

 quite convinced that he had never met with the songster before. 

 We then entered the osiers, and made some search for a nest, 

 but without success, for the bird never stayed long in one place, 

 and we had nothing to guide us. Meanwhile we heard some 

 curious imitations, among which was an intensely comical kind 



