4 
BIRDS IN A VILLAGE. 
bread and grain was for them and not the sparrows ; 
but although they stationed themselves close to 
me, the little robbers we were jointly trying to 
outwit managed to get some pieces of bread by 
flying up and catching them before they touched 
the sward. This little comedy over, I visited the 
water-fowl, ducks of many kinds, sheldrakes, geese 
from many lands, swans black and swans white. 
To see birds in prison during the spring mood 
of which I have spoken is not only no satisfaction 
but it is a positive pain ; but here, although with- 
out that large liberty that nature gives, they 
are free in a measure ; and swimming and diving 
or dozing in the sunshine, with the blue sky above 
them, they are perhaps unconscious of any re- 
straint. Walking along the margin I noticed 
three children some yards ahead of me ; two 
were quite small, but the third, in whose charge 
the others were, was a robust-looking girl, aged 
about ten or eleven years. From their dress and 
appearance I took them to be the children of a 
respectable artisan, or small tradesman ; but what 
attracted my attention was the very great pleasure 
the elder girl appeared to take in the birds. She 
had come well provided with stale bread to feed 
them, and after giving moderately of her store to 
the wood-pigeons and sparrows, she went on to 
the others, native and exotic, that were disporting 
