NATURE NOTES. 
98 
from a bottle of milk. One of them, however, grew gradually weaker and was 
soon quite prostrate. The little sister tried in vain to make her little companion 
come out in the sun, and then stood bleating at the gate. “ Lily ” (as the children 
called her) could nibble a little grass, and might be seen daily on the Green. She 
is one year and one month old now, and her fleece is splendid. She follows the 
children up and down the road, walks demurely at the side when the children 
walk in procession from the school gate to the lych gate of the church yard, and 
seems quite hurt and astonished at being turned back there. If the school-gate be 
left open, she comes bleating up the path and into the school-room if she finds the 
door open. She wears a blue ribbon and a bell, and the children pet her and hug 
and kiss her, and save their money to buy her “ sweets,” of which she is very fond. 
She feeds on the Green, but is fed with nraize twice a day. If she is hungry she 
finds her way into the house and into the pantry and “asks” for food, even sniff- 
ing at the bread-pan. In the dinner-hour she has gambols with the children on 
the Green. She runs after them and then leaps in the air for pure fun. When 
she finds the children are going into school, and the gate is shut in her face, she 
gallops off home and calls out for someone to come out and talk to her. If any 
sl?-aage hens should wander into her little yard she knows them to be intruders 
(though there are many hens), and promptly drives them out. She follows the 
children up and down the lane, and sometimes has to be shut up in the yard to 
keep her from going with them to Aylesbury ! In the holidays she misses the 
children, and stands bleating at the school gate. Indeed, last Christmas the 
children told me, “ Lily missed you so much, Governess, she would not eat her 
food.” It was certainly curious that when she failed to find the children in the 
school, she went over to the church-yard gate and listened there for them. And 
on .Sunday evening, when all the folks are gone to church or for a walk away 
from the village, Lily goes disconsolately up and down in front of the cottages, 
bleating. Ag.nes W. IIakte. 
Hulcoie, Aylesbury. 
Disappearance of Rooks’ Nests (p. 36). — There was formerly a large 
and historic rookeiy in the old elms of Wombwell Park, near Gravesend. In 1887 
the rooks took their departure, and removed by degrees every vestige of their nests. 
^Vs during the succeeding year a new rookery was formed in the neighbourhood of 
St-uthfleet, about a mile distant, it is presumable that at least part of the rooks 
settled there, but it has been supposed that some of them joined another rookery 
in the ground of Perrock Hall, a mile, or rather more, to the east of their ancient 
settlement. Various were the conjectures as to the cause of this migration, but I 
think a very probable one is that the rooks were offended at the noise that attended 
some festivities held in the Park on the occasion of Her Majesty’s Jubilee. 
Gravesend. J. R. S. Clifford. 
Hardiness of Canaries. — I have had these last two winters a proof of 
the hardiness of canaries. I turned out a large number of these birds into an 
aviary in my garden after the breeding season was over, and allowed them to 
remain there until the spring. It is only now that I have brought them into the 
house, and put them in cages for pairing. I should say that the aviary, made of 
thick wire, is placed against a wall, the roof only partially covered, and the outer 
side wholly exposed. This last winter in its earlier part was very severe, but 
though there was a hard frost, and snow was driven through the wire, and a 
coating of ice lay on the drinking pans, the canaries did not sufler, and have been 
.singing as merrily for some months just as though there were no winter in the 
world, and the season was eternal spring. Last summer I left some pairs in the 
aviary, and they built nests, laid eggs, and hatched their young. As there were 
other birds in the aviary, bullfinches, chaffinches, and greenfinches, the canaries 
were a good deal disturbed, and their nests were sometimes pulled to pieces, so 
that I cannot say they were as successful in rearing their young as they are when 
jilaced in separate cages, two and two. This year 1 have only left one pair in 
the aviary, ami there are in it fewer English birils, for, strange to say, though 
what are considered the more delicate birds survived the wind and rain and snow, 
two or three goldfinches and chaffinches, and one bullfinch, died. It is an 
interesting question whether canaries could be so .acclimatised as to live out 
altogether in the open air in this country, though one fears they might be unable 
