io6 
NATURE NOTES. 
Several times have I seen summer dawn on Loch Katrine ; 
and many a time should I like to see this lovely sight again. 
That lake, however, is at a distance ; to see it I should have to 
travel far; but St. James’s lake is close at hand, in the very 
heart of London ; beside this lake, or around it, I walk every 
day, sometimes near summer’s dawn, sometimes so late at night, 
or in so thick a darkness, that I think it well to keep a sharp 
look out on the bridge, where the hero of a modern novel, who was 
fond of looking over the lake, was waylaid and almost murdered 
by an assassin. 
About other parts of London I might say much, but this 
single part in its very centre may well stand alone : in my 
view, it is quite worthy so to do. And if we went on to what is 
soon, we are told, to be an integral part of London, I might tell 
how, one fine summer’s afternoon, in a remote part of Kew 
Gardens, I saw a fine young cuckoo perch on a branch near my 
head, followed and tended by two little foster-parents of hedge- 
warblers, who fussed about in apparent perplexitj", at their large 
and hungry offspring, and seemed half-starved by their exertions ; 
and how I called the attention of two ladies sitting near, to a 
sight which, they said, they had never heard of, and might, I 
thought, never see again. 
To that I might add my yearly rambles in Richmond Park, 
to watch the first return of the spring migrants ; how that Sheen 
Common, now, it is hoped, to be preserved by the exertions of the 
Selborne Society, used to be the earliest place to find some of 
them ; how that last year, I first heard, on April i6, what 
Wordsworth calls that “ thrice welcome darling of the spring,” 
the cuckoo, and how that this year, on April 8, I first saw one 
cuckoo flying from tree to tree, but not singing — if the voice may 
be so called — but that later the same day, I saw two cuckoos on 
the same tree, one speaking and the other silent. 
But the dwellers in royal Richmond, official Kew, and 
pleasant Petersham, now united in one well-governed borough, 
hardly like yet to allow themselves to be ranked as dwellers in 
London ; so I forbear. Enough has, however, been brought for- 
ward, I trust, to show that London is really a city to be proud 
of, and that enough in abundance to justify this may be found, 
if we will but look around for it. 
W. J. C. Miller. 
The Paragon, Richmond. 
Dog and Dove (p. 58). — Some years ago we had a dove, and at certain 
times of the day it was let out of its cage for a little exercise. It used to have 
great fun with a cat and dog which we kept. The dove would go and peck the 
cat, and the cat in turn would pat the dove gently with its paw. They used to 
play away till they got tired, when the cat and dog went to sleep, and the dove 
dew back to its cage. 
Robert F. McConnell. 
