222 
NATURE NOTES. 
to Abbots Ann, where a nephew of Gilbert White resided, and 
the tie of Magdalen College, Oxford (of which Bishop Durn- 
ford was a Fellow) to Selborne as landowners, were aiding 
motives in the Bishop’s love of Gilbert White’s Selborne, which 
he commended as chairman of the first meeting of the Rother 
Branch of the Selborne Society at Midhurst, August 14, 1888, 
as a book, once read, the friend of a lifetime. The meeting was 
held at the Midhurst Police-court, and the Bishop humorously 
Avished that he had all spoilers of birds and flowers in the neigh- 
bourhood, and in default of them, the unhappy Selborne Society’s 
agent, who ought to have “ run them in at that very bar. 
He told us how in Lancashire the habitat of the lady’s slipper 
{Cypvipedium Calceolus) had been divulged in the newspapers, and 
how one vandal took its flowers and uprooted it, that he might 
have the selfish glory of having the last specimen. He also told 
us of Bishop Wilberforce coming out of his own woods at 
Lavington, and meeting a wastrel (one of the pestilent robbers 
of plants) with a wallet, the contents of which — rare ferns and 
flowers — he made the culprit shoot out at his feet. The Bishop 
told him he knew whence every single specimen had come, and 
that he should go and put them back, or be prosecuted as a 
trespasser. 
The gem of an old palatial garden surrounded by the vener- 
able city walls, a treasure home of noble trees, is to be seen at 
Chichester. Here the white-throats, chiff-chaff's, water- wagtails, 
flycatchers, and sometimes a yaffle or green woodpecker, had a 
revel of it. Any Avild bird Avould be Avelcome, save the haAv- 
finch, deadly to pease. One of the Bishop’s delights was the 
missel-thrush — he admired its stately walk “ like Agag’s,” and 
the quick dexterity Avith Avhich it taught its young to feed ; but 
the favourite cat Avas a “terrible fowler.’’ In 1887, Avhen the 
missel-thrush Avas breeding in one of the trees in the palace 
gardens, “ to circumvent Master Pussy” the Bishop covered the 
stem of the tree in Avhich the nest Avas A\dth butcher’s broom, set 
bristles dowuAvards, for a foot or tAvo from the ground, like a 
portcullis for the “ Norman Gizer,” as this bird is called in Ox- 
fordshire. This Avas his OAvn invention, and ansAvered famously : 
the young brood got aAvay safely. From a very early time in 
his life the Bishop had observed that there are only a certain set 
average number of robins in a place, and reasoned to the fact, 
since noticed, that the young birds expel their elders. He went 
once in answer to a telegram, to see an unique Sussex ruddy 
sheldrake mounted at Pratt’s, Brighton. What pleased the 
Bishop most Avas the innocence of a little girl, Avho came in Avith 
an empty cage, to buy a living bird, the birds in this shop Avindow 
having eA^ery appearance to the child of being still alive. 
For some years the Bishop received a yearly spring tribute of 
morels, of Avhich he Avas very fond. There were none in 1893. 
A Selborne shepherd, named James Hewitt, came to the rescue, 
in 1894, producing a champion morel that beat those sent from 
