NATURE IN A SICK ROOM 
185 
the same time free, i.e., are not in a note-book, which requires 
either copying or indexing. All the sheets, except the first, want 
a little adding to them before they are put into alphabetical 
order. During your walk you changed your hamlet once and 
your soil twice. See that all have the date and parish added, 
and that every botanical and shell note has its proper soil note 
too. Then comes the shuffling into alphabetical order. The 
first note — date page as it is called — is put under “ weather,” 
and takes its place as the last in that series, while the rest are 
put at the end of their own subjects, if you have other notes, all 
in alphabetical order. We give the best advice when we say, 
fill them in at once, and never go to rest without putting them 
into their place. 
When the art of stating salient facts in the fewest possible 
words has been mastered, the whole secret of field-note making 
has been grasped. If the method is systematically followed up, 
an unrivalled note-book, always in order and ready for consulta- 
tion, will be the result. When the work has been carried on for 
a few years, the mass of accurate information that has been 
collected will be astonishing — to no one more astonishing than 
the busy worker who has gathered and arranged it. 
NATURE IN A SICK ROOM. 
IOR the last fourteen weeks I have never left this room, 
so have had few opportunities of studying out-door 
j life, yet it may interest readers of Nature Notes to 
hear how wonderfully nature has befriended me, and 
because I could not go to her has come to me. This sanatorium 
stands in the centre of extensive pine woods which slope down 
to the Dee, while in the distance are “dark Lcehnagar ” and 
other peaks of the Northern Grampians. The first natural 
history object to attract my attention was the chaffinch. A 
flock of at least a hundred live in the bushes below the windows, 
and always keep at least one eye fixed upon certain bed-room 
windows. The tameness of these birds is extraordinary. The 
instant a crust is thrown out on to the window ledge or sloping 
verandah roof the birds are round it in a flock, and all signs of 
fear vanish. They are soon into the room and hopping about 
the bed. I have had as many as twenty-five chaffinches in the 
room at a time. A few robins came, and once there was a 
terrible fight, the vanquished bird retiring under a bath, and 
remaining there quite still for an hour. Occasionally the birds 
perch on the hot pipes. Poor things, they get a fearful fright. 
Downstairs nothing can be placed on the tables until just before 
a meal, otherwise the butter is pecked all over. One day a 
gentleman, who was to have his lunch early so as to catch a 
