SELBORNIANA. 
237 ' 
the diocese, who in that year issued a letter to the teachers, in which he sketched 
a plan similar to Mr. Rawnsley’s. He pointed out the help it might be to the 
children if they were encouraged to gather wild flowers during their rambles, and 
bring them each week to their teacher to be named, when a few elementary 
botanical explanations should be given. In various parishes these suggestions 
have been acted on, and it is surprising how ardent some of the children have 
become, and how quick in discovering new plants. Last year the Bishop’s prize 
was given to a child twelve years of age, from St. John’s School, Weymouth, for 
the large number of specimens she had gathered. The same girl has this year- 
evinced the same amount of interest, and the list of plants and names has just 
again been sent to Salisbury. 
S. M. P.\Y.\E. 
Hq-w to Feed tiie Birds. — During the next two months there will doubt- 
less be occasions when many of your readers will be charitable enough to feed the 
birds. I will suggest, by your leave, the best way to do this. In snow and frost 
a place may be cleared at a suitable distance from the window — say twenty yards 
— in the open so the birds are free from cats. Odd scraps from the house can 
be put down, supplemented with a few potatoes boiled with meal, and any refuse 
apples and pears. The blackbirds and thrushes will soon find this out, and now 
and then a missel thrush, red-wing, or starling will come, with of course the robins 
and hedge-warblers. A small quantity of fine gravel or grit should be thrown 
down as a digestive, and a pan of water is a great boon, especially when there is no 
snow'. A handful of turnip seed will attract the finch tribe, the first to come being 
the chaffinches and greenfinches, with here and there a linnet, redpole, mountain 
finch and goldfinch. Then in most places some of the tits — great, blue, cole, or 
marsh — will turn up with a nuthatch or two. The last are my especial favourites, 
and prefer nuts varied by a bit of bread or chopped bacon for a change. The 
great tit delights in a coco-nut sawn in half and hung up, and this never freezes. 
The blue tit will pick a mutton-chop bone which we often rescue from the dogs ; 
the cole and marsh tits are fond of a piece of cheese rind cut a third of an inch 
thick, and nailed to a board a foot square suspended outside the window by the 
four corners. In very severe weather I have known a wren come, and it will take 
turnip seeds and very small currants. The majority of these birds are, I believe, 
permanent residents if they can obtain the necessary food and quiet. In the long 
frost of 1890-1 I noticed at feed all the birds I mention. The sparrows are 
troublesome, but they retire early and leave the small birds to finish their last 
meal in peace, and they never venture upon the hanging board. The digestion of 
a bird is very rapid, and in a long frost they feed all day long. It is not cold that 
kills them, but hunger. 
Tosiock, Bury St. Edmiinds. \V. II. TuCK. 
Another Open Space Satted. — Once more Londoners are to be con- 
gratulated upon the dedication to their use and enjoyment for ever of another, 
open space in the shape of West Wickham Common. .Small, and sadly diminished 
in extent from what it was formerly, its picturesque beauty goes far to compensate 
the regret that such a comparative fragment should alone remain unenclosed. The 
highest praise is due to the inhabitants of the neighbourhood who started a sub- 
scription for the purchase of the manorial rights, and to the City Corporation 
in completing the purchase and undertaking to maintain the Common in order. 
The Lord Mayor, in his admirable speech at the dedication ceremony, said it 
seemed to him “ that it wanted but that Common to connect the links of the chain 
of open spaces round London.” But, alas 1 the chain of open spaces encom- 
passing London is anything but complete, and attention may be called to at least 
one important missing link. A year or more since I pointed out in these pages 
what a loss Londoners were sustaining in the slow but sure effacement of Wimble- 
don Park,* and urged that the Park would be needed as a recreation ground for 
the large population of the Wandsw’orth suburbs already rapidly on the increase. 
The whole of the land lying between Wimbledon Park on its eastern borders and 
Earlsfield, one of the suburbs of Wandsw'orth, is now on sale for building pur- 
pose.s. A short while since part of the land was flooded by the overflow of the 
river Wandle, and from the submerged meadow arose two posts bearing aloft the 
See Nature Notes, Oct., 1891, p. 185. 
