BOOKS FOR NATURE LOVERS. 
57 
shy at first when they saw near the cage three smiling faces, 
but love soon conquered all fear and a worm was placed by 
them in the little one’s open beak. After his repast, Dicky 
settled his feathers and had a nap, while one of the parents 
found another worm and rested on the branch of a tree opposite 
the cage till the little one awoke and chirped, which it did about 
every half hour. Each day the bright little captive grew 
stronger and handsomer, and after a ten days’ stay with us, 
the cage with the door open was left on the floor. Dicky’s 
parents, no doubt, found this out and called him away, which 
was just what its friends wished should happen. A young 
Thrush sometimes seen near the house was thought to be the 
little nurseling, but soon its pinions were spread and all traces 
of it were lost. The writer sat close to the cage to take the 
prisoner’s portrait and was much interested in what she wit- 
nessed. 
Tower House, Cotham, Bristol. P. A. Fry. 
BOOKS FOR NATURE LOVERS. 
It would be hard to find a more charming little volume, both externally 
and internally, than Days and Hours in a Garden , by E. V. B. (Elliot Stock), 
of which the seventh edition has just reached us. Although the authoress gives 
only her initials on the title page, many Selbornians will at once recognise 
in them the well-known signature of the Hon. Mrs. R. C. Boyle, one of the 
earliest and most enthusiastic supporters of the Selborne Society. Many of 
us, no doubt, are familiar with this delightful, daintily-dressed, beautifully- 
illustrated little book ; but to those who do not yet know it, whether they 
are lovers of gardens or not, let us heartily recommend it as probably the 
most beautiful and loving description of a garden ever written. It has the unusual 
quality of making the trees and flowers spoken of seem to us as if they were real 
individuals, not merely “ fine specimens.” By the aid of the exquisite vignettes, we 
get to know this garden better than we know many gardens we have often visited ; 
we know all its treasures, and delight in them as if they were our own ; we know, 
too, all the living; creatures which make it their pleasant home, and wish them 
well. And so it is with that mingling of joy and sorrow, that comes from hearing 
in the same letter news of the good and evil fate of old friends, that former readers 
of “ Days and Hours ” read in a preface dated February, 1890 : — “ As to the living 
frequenters of the garden, whose presence there for the most part enhances our 
enjoyment of it, the tomtits and the nuthatches are as busy with the cocoa-nuts 
which hang for their use all winter from the rose-arches, as the mice and the 
sparrows are with the crocuses ; the white pigeons still circle in the air and settle 
upon the gables, or preen their feathers in the sunshine amongst the yellow stone- 
crop at the base of the old grey pillar in the parterr ; the swallows return year by 
year to their nests within the porch ; but the faithful, satin-coated collie lies still 
for ever under the turf by the ivied wall, and the earth lies heavy on his noble 
head Already the snowdrops are giving way before impatient 
hepaticas and primroses, the bare elms are thickening with purple, and we begin 
to count the gentian buds. Everywhere Nature repairs herself in ceaseless round. 
Only in our human hives some vacant spots there may be where the grass will not 
grow green again.” 
It seems thankless to point out any blemishes in so delightful a volume ; but 
the “ Rhadamanthine ” reviewer must express his regret that there are still many 
misprints in the scientific names of plants. We are not pedants in this matter. In 
a book like that under notice we much prefer English names, if they may be had. 
We rather like the quaint spelling “ parterr,” and the revived Spenserian form 
