192 
NATURE NOTES. 
who is always practising his song, or the indefatigable ardour with 
which he hunted for the nightingale in Surrey, too late in June 
to hear more than a single utterance of one belated singer. But 
I do wish to ask readers of Nature Notes to read the chapter 
on “British Fertility” in Fresh Fields , and to mark how an 
observant American sees in England such extraordinary abund- 
ance of all animal life as he never dreamt of at home. 
One thing that strikes him (p. 266) is the great number of 
eggs which our birds lay, and their comparative immunity from 
danger (!). “One can easily see,” he says, “why the British 
birds so thrive and abound. There is a chaffinch for every tree, 
and a crow (i.e., rook), and a starling for every square rod of 
ground.” It is true, every word of it. Our opulence in birds is 
amazing ; it struck me more than ever this summer when I re- 
turned from the Alps. And this in spite of the fact that for 
centuries our village boys have taken every nest they could find. 
A hard winter like the last comes and kills all our kingfishers ; 
they are already beginning to appear again, and in three or 
four years will be as common as ever. People say that swal- 
lows and martins are diminishing in number ; but I counted 
fifty on my house-roof yesterday morning, and to my eyes the 
air has often been alive with them during this summer of flies 
and moisture. Though I deprecate with all my heart all cruelty, 
all needless bird-nesting and above all, the senseless fashion of 
bird-wearing {now, I think, happily dying out), nothing will 
make me believe that we have not as many birds as we can 
well do with, or that there is any fear of their depopulation, 
unless it be from social reforms and the disappearance of landed 
estates. The list of birds which really need protection from 
human ignorance or selfishness is small, and is pretty well 
known. For the rest let us take Mr. Burroughs’s word for it 
that the land is simply teeming with them. And while thank- 
ing him for his sensible and friendly witness on a point like 
this, I will thank him also for the great pleasure his volumes 
have given me. If it were only possible, I would take the next 
steamer to New York, go a-hunting for Mr. Burroughs in his 
native haunts, and ask him to introduce me to some of his own 
favourites before October has driven them southwards. 
W. YYarde Fowler. 
[We cordially endorse Mr. Warde Fowler’s recommendation of Mr. Burroughs’s 
books, one of which, Winter Sunshine, was briefly commended in Nature 
Notes for May, 1890. Not only are their contents admirable in literary style 
and thoroughly Selbornian in spirit, but their publisher, Mr. David Douglas, of 
Edinburgh, has done his part of the work in a most attractive fashion, and the 
little volumes, both in typography and size, are models of what books for the 
pocket should be. The complete list of them is as follows : Winter Sunshine, 
Locusts and Wild Honey, Wake-Robin, Fresh Fields, Birds and Poets, Pepacton. 
Our space will not allow us to enter upon a detailed notice of these volumes, and, 
indeed, Mr. Fowler’s appreciative article renders this unnecessary ; but we entirely 
concur in the following sentence from the Spectator, published in a review of one 
of Mr. Burroughs’s books : — “ Mr. Burroughs says, in speaking of his various 
