50 
NATURE NOTES. 
During the first half of May various birds passed through 
London. Some sedge warblers took up their abode on the 
island in the Serpentine on the 3rd, but only remained for about 
a week. I heard a blackcap on the 6th, and on the 9th I 
observed a whinchat and some sand martins, and my sister saw 
several house martins and a pair of common sandpipers by the 
Long Water. Spotted flycatchers appeared on May ii, 
and a lesser whitethroat was heard on the 18th. None of these 
spring visitors, however, stayed with us except the flycatchers, 
several pairs of which remained as usual to nest in Kensington 
Gardens. 
For the first time for many years I spent August in town, and 
saw a good many of these flycatchers up till about the end of the 
third week, not only in Kensington Gardens and Hyde Park, but 
also in the Green Park, within a few feet of Piccadilly. When 
I started for my holiday at the end of the month they had almost 
all disappeared. In August I also saw one or two willow wrens 
again, but where they had come from I cannot say. 
On October 2, just after my return to town, several black- 
headed gulls re-appeared on the Serpentine ; with the exception 
of an apparently adult bird which paid us a visit in July, 
I had not seen one there since they left in spring, but throughout 
the autumn, whenever the weather was boisterous, a few made 
their appearance. 
Swallows passed over London in October in small parties, 
nearly always making their way south ; and during November 
and December cold and stormy weather was generally preceded 
by flocks of larks, which seemed almost invariably to come from 
the east. 
My last note of interest for the year is that a heron paid the 
Long Water a visit on December 21. 
1 have referred above to the return of the rooks to Kensing- 
ton Gardens, in 1893, it is a very curious fact that, having 
tried the trees by Kensington Palace with apparently much 
success for one year, they should have deserted the rookery in 
1894. Several of the birds were constantly to be seen in the 
neighbourhood of the old nests, but I have been unable to 
ascertain, either from my own observations or from numerous 
inquiries of others, that a single nest was occupied. Moreover, 
it is extremely doubtful whether any of the nests in Connaught 
Square were inhabited. There are always numbers of rooks 
about the parks, and it is to be hoped that they will return to 
their former haunts this year. 
A. Holte Macpherson. 
“Natural History of Selborne.” —Gilbert White's autograph nianu- 
script of his Naliiral History of Selhome will be offered for sale by auction by 
Messrs. Sotheby, Wilkinson, and Hodge during the coming season. It has been 
in the possession of the White family ever since the author’s death, and there are 
portions of the letters that have not been published. 
