8198 



Birds. 



sun-bright spots, — then you are startled in your walks by strange gut- 

 tural noises, which seem to come from beneath your feet, but which 

 proceed in reality from the Iris leaves which margin the river's brink. 



There, moored in some secluded shallow spot, is seen a long roofed 

 boat, shaped like Noah's Ark, with a sloping board leading into the 

 reeds and sedges. A little boy watches all day long his greedy 

 charges, keeping them in order by means of a slender wand with a bit 

 of rag at the end. At daybreak down swarm the ducks into the frog- 

 peopled swamp, and at sunset they are driven back, and waddle up 

 the ladder to their house to roost. 



There is a wide marshy plain at the junction of the Woosung and 

 Yang-tsze rivers, with mud flats stretching away for miles. Here the 

 uncouth buffaloes delight to wallow in the ooze ; the white padi-birds 

 stand in a row at the edge of the water ; and far in the distance, like 

 a sentry at his outpost, watches the gray solitary heron. A flock of 

 teal settles down in the water, and the sparkling surface of the 

 river is dotted with bi own-sailed junks. A vole or a field mouse 

 sometimes runs across your path, or the gliding form of a snake is 

 seen vanishing in the grass. Towards evening frogs are demonstra- 

 tive, and assert themselves ; they croak loudly and without cessation, 

 and leap by hundreds down the banks of the dykes and streams. 

 Now these merry Batrachians are good for ducks, and Chinamen are 

 particularly fond of fat ducks. The natural result is that at this 

 " witching hour of night " silent boys and old patient men are seen in 

 these frog-haunted precincts, a long bamboo rod in their hand and a 

 string baited with a worm, angling for frogs ! In my homeward walks, 

 when the brown owl swoops dow T n and settles on the cotton fields, and 

 the huge black Copris flies across my face, I often fall in with an old 

 man bending under the weight of a hamper of frogs, the produce of 

 his evening's fishing. 



Arthur Adams. 



Shanghai. 



Occurrence of rare Birds near Worcester. — At the commencement of the present 

 shooting season a fine specimen of the hoopoe was shot by Mr. Pardoe, of the Yew- 

 tree Farm, near Omber&ley, in this county : it was stuffed by Mr. Brooks, of this city, 

 in whose care it is at the present time : I was informed that another was seen in the 

 same neighbourhood, and is being sharply looked after. About twenty-five years ago 

 I saw one that hud been shot near the Trench Woods, about seven miles from 

 Worcester, and between that period and the present another was killed, I have ascer- 

 tained, at another place about the same distance from this city, and is in the posses- 

 sion of Mr. J. Fieeman, of Gaines, near Bromyard. But few rare species have been 



