BTItDS IN A VILLAGE. 
75 
a bird in a case of this kind. Some idea of how 
blind it is may be formed by imagining a case in 
widely separated types of our own species, which 
would be a parallel to that of the cuckoo and 
hedge-sparrow. Let us imagine that some 
malicious Arabian Nights' genius had snatched up 
the infant male child of a Scandinavian couple — 
the largest of their nation ; and flying away to 
Africa with it, to the heart of the great Congo forest, 
had laid it on the breast of a little coffee-coloured, 
woolly-headed, spindle-shanked, pot-bellied, four- 
foot, pigmy mother, taking away at the same time 
her own newly born babe ; that she had tenderly 
nursed the substituted child, and reared and pro- 
tected it, ministering, according to her lights, to all 
its huge wants, until he had come to the fulness of 
his stature, yet never suspected that the magnifi- 
cent ivory-limbed giant, with flowing yellow locks 
and cerulean eyes, was not the child of her own 
womb. 
Bright and genial were all the last days of June, 
when I loitered in the lanes before the unwished 
day of my return to London. During this quiet 
pleasant time the greenfinch was perhaps more to 
me than any other songster. In the village itself, 
with the adjacent lanes and orchards, this pretty, 
seldom silent bird was the most common species. 
