146 
NATURE NOTES. 
WILD NATURE. 
[In accordance with our promise last month, we publish the address delivered 
by Mrs. Brightwen at the Annual Meeting of the Selborne Society, which has 
been kindly revised by her for these pages. — E d. N.N.'\ 
HAVE but two excuses for venturing to address a few 
words to you this evening. The knowledge that I am 
in the presence of so many who are learned and 
scientific in their acquaintance with natural history 
must make me feel some hesitation in speaking before them. 
My first excuse for doing so, however, is that the Selborne 
Society has a very warm place in my affections. I think it is 
doing a great work all over England ; it is helping to mould 
public opinion, and people who were formerly careless in their 
treatment of animals and birds are learning that it is a duty to 
show kindness towards them. My second excuse is, that I lead 
such an ideal life of friendship with all animated nature in my 
home, that I long that others should share my pleasure in 
winning the love of wild creatures. 
For twenty-two years I have lived at “ The Grove,” a place 
which seems specially fitted to be the home of a naturalist, since 
it is shut off from the public on all sides by a gorse-covered 
common, while within are lawns and fields and woods where 
every wild creature may learn to know that it is safe from 
persecution. Generations of squirrels have been born in the 
trees which surround the house, and they know so well that I 
am their friend, that they leap in at the dining-room window 
two and three at a time to enjoy the nuts placed on a table for 
their benefit. They are clever enough to know that a store of 
Barcelona nuts may be found in a certain cupboard, and away 
they run over the floor, until having leapt on to a shelf, they sit 
in the box of nuts and eat and squabble and growl at each other, 
to our great amusement. They will take nuts out of my hand, 
and are in fact almost as tame as kittens. Nuthatches also 
enjoy the Barcelonas and sit outside the windows waiting for a 
handful to be thrown to them. A tame hedgehog trots up in 
the evening close to the drawing-room window to partake of 
bread and milk, and although originally wild it will receive 
any little dainty from my hand without the slightest fear. 
I have this spring been delighted to hear the curious mating 
note of the lesser spotted woodpecker, and I have been fortunate 
enough to discern with a field glass two pairs of these birds in 
the top of a Scotch fir. It is very unusual to catch a glimpse 
of this species, but for many weeks this year their call notes 
have been heard in every direction in the woods around the 
house. The birds must either have been very numerous or else 
they must have some ventriloquial power. 
We constantly hear the laughing note of the green wood- 
pecker, and also its very different cry foretelling rain. 
