74 
NATURE NOTES. 
Council’s protection of wild birds, and in artificial re-introduction 
where harmless native wild birds have been lost. And no doubt 
there is a wonderful power of recuperativeness in all animal life 
when at a low ebb, but short of the point of “ extermination,” a 
word that I did not use. 
Let me own the charm of Mr. Fowler's muse. A Year with 
the Birds, written somewhat in Mr. Knox’s style, has been the 
delight of many readers, is worthy even of Oxford. He has 
done excellent work in showing that Aristotle, Homer and Virgil 
knew more about the birds than old scholars thought. The 
frontispiece of A Year with the Birds is a favourite bird haunt, as 
the following independent testimony may show. One bright 
day at the end of Slay, 1885, after a long walk to the Cherwell 
from the north of Oxford, after passing many hedgerows, once 
vocal but now over-nested and silent, at last the ferry to Meso- 
potamia was reached, and a nightingale’s song was to be 
heard. It was near the island at Parson’s Pleasure, in a 
thicket not far from the three willows askant the stream, the 
winter haunt of the grey wagtail in Mr. Fowler’s vignette. 
H. D. Gordon. 
SELBORNIANA. 
The River Bank at Richmond. — We have received several numbers of 
the Thames Valley Times and the Richmond and Twickenham Times, containing 
articles and letters respecting the barbarous proposal of the Richmond Sewerage 
Board to erect sewer ventilators along the river side. We are delighted to see 
that three well-known Selbornians have vigorously denounced what would be 
(from an aesthetic point of view) an atrocious outrage upon the beauty of London’s 
most beautiful suburb. Mr. Edward King, than whom no Selbornian is more 
ready to expend time and money on behalf the Society, has unusual facilities 
for conducting a campaign against any nuisances threatened to the town for 
which he has done so much ; inasmuch as he is editor and proprietor of the two 
excellent papers mentioned above. He has brought the full power of the Fourth 
Estate to bear upon the would-be defilers of the banks of the silvery Thames. 
The following sample will show the style in which he “speaks up to” the 
Conscript Fathers of this newly-made corporate town : — “ Are the powers that 
rule Richmond so hopelessly wanting in taste and perception that they have not 
the sense to know that the more they discount her attractions the more they 
jeopardise her commercial prosperity ? In the past they have surely sinned 
enough in this respect to make every resident with a spark of artistic feeling curse 
their power for working ill, and their really criminal indifference to the ugly and 
offensive.” 
Councillor J. B. Hilditch, to whom all Selbornians are much indebted for his 
most effective crusade against the monstrous brood of Sky Signs, has taken up the 
subject with his characteristic energy, and has not only shown what would be the 
dire effects of such a noxious and unsuitable method of ventilation, but has ex- 
plained to the Sewage Board how the ventilation may be better done without the 
pollution. Lastly, Mr. \V. J. C. Miller, Registrar of the General Medical Coun- 
cil, a veteran Selbornian, writes an admirable letter, taking a line of argument 
which we have more than once adopted ourselves, viz., that the beauty which 
makes Richmond the favourite of men of art and letters and the ever-refreshing 
resort of the wearied Londoner, is not merely an elegant addition to the commer- 
cial value of houses in that borough, but is a national possession, any attack upon 
