134 
NATURE NOTES. 
last after much poising and fluttering, darted into the tiny holes 
that formed the only entrance. It was already the end of August, 
and we wondered whether the broods would be fledged in time 
for the general flight to a warmer clime ; we hardly think this 
could have been' the case, and they must be hibernating some- 
where in the neighbourhood. We hope that next year some 
swallows — perhaps the same as in Hans Andersen’s story — will 
build again under our eaves and bring us luck ; but this they 
must do if they come at all, for the presence of these beautiful 
birds is itself a piece of good fortune surpassing mere worldly 
prosperity. 
X. 
BIRDS IN NORMANDY. 
T was on the evening of September i6, 1896, that I and 
several others descended from a stuffy second-class 
carriage at the little station of Pontorson, en route for 
Mont St. Michel. The journey had been through 
exquisite scenery, past fields of buckw^heat, cut and drying in 
the sun, with stalks of a most gorgeous crimson — past orchards 
full of apple-trees loaded with fruit equally magnificent in 
colouring — past tiny villages and large towns — and in all of 
these the ubiquitous magpie. Perhaps the quantity of these 
birds in France has something to do with the striking lack of 
small birds of every kind ; even sparrows seemed comparatively 
few in number, and of small finches, &c., we had noticed none, 
at any rate from the train. We were glad to stretch our 
cramped limbs a little before ascending to the roof of the remark- 
able vehicle which tran.sports travellers, in search of the pic- 
turesque and unique, from Pontorson to the famous Mount. 
Our road thither lay at first through pastures surrounded by 
thick wall-like banks of sods, with a row of poplars planted 
along the top of each, and every field had its pair of magpies, 
walking on the grass beneath the bank, then springing on to it 
and displaying their magnificent plumage in a w^ay which seemed 
to show their consciousness of its beauty. Sometimes one of 
them would alight on the head or body of a cow lying placidly 
chewing its cud on the soft emerald grass, and the cow seemed 
to treat it as a matter of course, and did not stop for a moment 
in the exercise of its ruminating jaws. 
Further on we passed some large marshes through which runs 
the little river which divides Normandy from Brittany, and here 
I noticed some gulls — blackheads, and 1 think common gulls, 
while in a shallow pool by the roadside a party of Ray’s wagtails 
were tripping about flirting their tails incessantly. There is no 
more restless bird than a wagtail ; I almost think that the secret 
of perpetual motion is enshrined somewhere among the muscles 
which govern those long, slender tails of theirs. The hedges of 
tamarisks bordering the road were in late blossom, and now and 
