254 
NATURE NOTES. 
a friend who had seen a nest near it, put it back, as it seemed 
too inexperienced to be left alone. But later in the same day 
we found it, having again ventured out, headless. The following 
week the same friend was sitting quietly under a hedge on one 
of the very hot days in the beginning of August, when a sparrow- 
hawk flew over, and was so startled at the unexpected sight of a 
human being that it dropped its prey at our friend’s feet, and it 
was a young partridge, without a head. So we felt assured that 
the same fate had been that of the young thrush. It has always 
been our rule to allow no birds to be shot or trapped on our 
premises (not even sparrows) ; but a long succession of outrages 
on the young and helpless make one almost out of patience with 
the sparrow-hawks. I mentioned our difficulties, as to whether 
the death-warrant of the sparrow-hawk should go forth, or 
whether the balance of power should be left to Nature herself, to 
a literary friend, whose researches in the literature of bygone 
centuries seem only to intensify his interest in the world of 
Nature around him, and he thus expressed his views in a 
letter : — “ It is an ethical question, which 1 must confess myself 
unable to solve. If it is right to protect the chaffinch from the 
hawk, is it not, nevertheless, wrong to deprive the hawk of his 
dinner? Just fancy, now, if a ‘ superior person ’ were to inter- 
vene perpetually, or even occasionally, between that objection- 
able but necessary (as we esteem him) individual, the butcher, 
and carry off the victim which is destined for our dinner. The 
only way I can see out of the difficulty is, that as you feed the 
small birds with crumbs to save them from the misdeed of eating 
your fruit, &c., so }'OU might provide the hawk with steaks and 
chops to save the small birds ! but then — how about the sheep 
and oxen ? I give it up as insoluble ! ” 
So do I — so do we all! Just at this moment a farmer’s 
daughter calls, to say it will considerably lighten her basket if 
we will take a couple of chickens off her hands, she is carrying 
to the village. This is how we do our shopping here — but what 
a commentary on the above I 
Now in these days of autumn is the time when the song of 
the young redbreasts sounds out with such wondrous sweetness. 
Of the old birds we have not seen much lately, but now, moult- 
ing and a little change of scene accomplished, back they are come 
to their old haunts, and fights for possession set in ; but we hope, 
that with a liberal allowance of crumbs some of the young ones 
may be permitted to remain with us — so bright are their scarlet 
waistcoats I so clear their fresh young song ! There is some- 
thing inexplicably charming about the autumn song of the 
robins ; there is none of the love-making and rivalry of spring 
to inspire it ; when we go out they seem to sing to us as though 
the song meant something for our dull human ears, and we try 
to catch its hidden meaning. Wordsworth thus wrote of the 
autumn song of birds, meaning, evidently, the redbreast : — 
