A LONDON FLOWER SHOW. 
123 
first prize had been adjudged to the owner and cultivator of what 
was described as not only a window-garden, but a garden spread- 
ing over a roof, forming a bower of greenness and brightness. 
This prize-taker was a young man of about nineteen. 
Was it not well to see a sight like this ? Better still to be 
one of the promoters and encouragers of window-gardening, and 
helpers and rewarders thereof*- — a patch of fair colour in the 
monotony of lives of toil, too often pleasureless toil ; a hint of 
things lovely beyond the power of telling ; a foretaste of good 
and beauty yet to be. 
E. H. Hickey. 
A VISIT TO SPOONBILLS. 
T is not often that the White Spoonbill, Platalea leucorodia, 
is now seen in England, for like many other fen- 
frequenting birds, it has been deprived of its favourite 
haunts in consequence of the extensive draining opera- 
tions carried out in late years. This has been especially the 
case in our eastern counties. The Spoonbill is mentioned by 
Sir Thomas Browne in 1668 as breeding in Norfolk and Suffolk ; 
and within the last few years the discovery has been made that 
it formerly bred in Sussex and Middlesex. 
The nearest nesting-place to our shores was, until 1882, the 
Horster Meer in Holland, about an hour’s journey by rail from 
Amsterdam, in the direction of Utrecht. In that year the 
draining of the meer was undertaken, which was a signal of 
departure for the spoonbills, and we were very glad of an op- 
portunity of paying them a visit during a short stay we were 
making at Amsterdam in the month of May. 
Having a letter of introduction from Dr. Sclater to the 
Curator of the Zoological Gardens, we went to call upon him 
and to ask his advice and assistance.- The curator himself 
was an old gentleman, and had not visited the Horster Meer, 
but he most kindly entered into our wishes, and sent for the 
sub-curator, who, on hearing our errand, was good enough to 
propose guiding us himself, and, as he spoke English well and 
had already made the expedition, nothing could have been more 
convenient. Accordingly he arranged with my father to meet us 
the next morning. May 23, at the station near the Amstel Hotel, 
to take the 11.15 train for a village called Vreeland, where there 
was a little station serving also for the village of Loena and 
called by both names. 
* The prizes given at this flower show cost, I was informed, about twenty 
pounds. But who can estimate the value of the time and thought so liberally 
spent upon it ? 
