94 
NATURE NOTES. 
days the birds haunted the near trees and sang to us as if gratefully. Perhaps Sel- 
bornians will take note of the habits of birds in feeding their young, and make a 
memorandum of the spells of time which various species require for healthy 
mastication and digestion. My blackbirds were well able to count ten, but not 
eleven, in minutes. 
M. E. Haweis. 
The Nightingale in the Thames Valley.— Mr. Albert C. Keen writes 
from 91, King Street West, Hammersmith : — “ Many readers of Nature Notes 
will be agreeably surprised to learn that during the past and some recent early 
summers a nightingale has been in the habit of singing in two or three of the old- 
fashioned gardens that lie close to the Middlesex end of Hammersmith Bridge, on 
the right as you approach the bridge, and within a few hundred yards of busy 
King Street, Hammersmith. One of the gardens thus honoured is that of Rigby 
House, once the residence of Sir Charles Wheatstone, the eminent electrician.” 
On the other hand, Mr. F. C. Hodgson, of Twickenham, writes to the Times 
of May 29th, asking persons who take an interest in such subjects, whether they 
have observed that the number of nightingales singing is less than usual this year. 
“ In this neighbourhood we generally have a fair number, but this year I have only 
heard one, and that one very seldom. In most of the favourite haunts of the bird 
I have heard none this year. During a fortnight I lately spent in the south of the 
Isle of Wight I heard but one, though I rvas out of doors at all times in the day 
and the weather was highly favourable for them. To-day I spent three or four 
hours out of doors at Horton — Milton’s Horton, which ever since his days has been 
famous for nightingales — -but though I heard many other birds singing, I heard not 
one nightingale. I should be interested to know if the same scarcity has been ob- 
served in other parts of the country, particularly in the eastern counties, where they 
are usually so abundant.” 
Birds and Bonnets. — We have to acknowledge several extracts kindly 
sent us by that veteran naturalist and humanitarian, the Rev. F. O. Morris, 
of Nunburnholme Rectory’, Yorkshire. Out of the number we have pleasure in 
printing the following letter on the use of birds as trimming for ladies’ bonnets, 
which seems to point to the dawning of a new and happier era in the history of 
the fashion-book 
“ I take the opportunity of the present change to spring fashions to draw the 
attention of your readers to the almost entire absence of the use of birds as a 
trimming in hats. This custom is during the coming spring apparently to be, for 
a time at least, abandoned, the preference being given to imitation flowers, which, 
regarded merely from an aesthetic point of view, must surely prove as ornaments 
vastly preferable to that which cannot but convey, at any rate to those whose 
opinion is of any worth, a repulsive idea of murder — ‘ murder of this best of 
harmless beings,’ as Browning has it. The more I have inquired into the 
matter the more I am convinced that in many instances the wearers of the remains 
of the poor tortured birds have not really thought about the subject at all ; at any 
rate have given to it no thought whatever, with regard to the excessive cruelty 
necessarily involved. One example alone may convey to the minds of some who 
have not given the subject even a passing thought, a slight idea of what the wear- 
ing of wings may involve. The following is an extract from Yarrell’s History of 
British Birds : — ‘ Some years ago, -when the plumes of birds were much worn in 
ladies’ hats, the barred wings of the young kittiwake were in great demand for the 
purpose, and vast numbers were slaughtered at their breeding haunts. . . . 
Fishing smacks with extra boats and crews used to commence their work of de- 
struction at Lundy Island by daybreak on August 1st, continuing this proceeding 
for upwards of a fortnight. In many cases wings 'were torn off 'wounded birds 
before they 'were dead , the mangled victims being tossed back into the 'water. . . 
Allowing for the starved nestlings, it is well within the mark to say that at least 
nine thousand of these inoffensive birds were destroyed during the fortnight.’ 
“It is most sincerely to be hoped that as now for a brief time this spring’s fashion 
may cause the temporary laying aside of birds as trimmings, all those interested 
in the suppression of an unwarrantable destruction of bird life will, in every way 
in their power, endeavour to enlighten the minds of the ignorant and to gain the 
sympathies of the feeling ; so that when the rapid changes of fashion again tend 
