THE MEDITERRANEAN NATTJRA LITS 
419 
Prof. Tagliaferro who has called my attention 
to this fact informs me that he has already no- 
ticed quantities of this fly in his garden at Musta. 
Orange growers had, therefore, better be on 
their guard against the enemy while there is yet 
time. 
* 
* -x- 
Another tree that has suffered very severely 
from disease this summer is the “ Hitolacca dioica'\ 
which though of no economic or industrial value 
is one of the few trees used here for ornamental 
purposes, occuping together with the “ Ailantus. “ 
and the “ Melid ” amongst us the place which 
the Robiniae , Magnohae , Eucalyptus etc. take 
in other places. 
Its hardiness had protected it from all disease, 
until this summer, when, the greater part of the 
trees bordering the public roads, at the time 
when they ought to display to the best their 
bright green foliage, looked devoid of leaves and 
the few that were left on them were crumpled 
and blackened as if a blight had passed over 
them. 
I have not studied the cause of the disease, but 
I should judge that is it due to a species of “Aphis” 
from which all the trees examined were suffering. 
A. C. G. 
Starlings. 
I’ll hav e a starling shall be taught to speak. 
HENRY THE FOURTH 
It is Sunday morning, and I have been watch- 
ing the starlings. Nature has no fourth com- 
mandment in her decalogue, and all her children 
are industriously busy, some of them anxiously so; 
but none seem to me so terribly in earnest as my 
friends the starlings. From a window at the back 
of our house I look from under a canopy of still 
leafy, though autumn-tinted trees, on to a stretch 
of close cut grass— grass that a few weeks ago was 
all parched, patched, and brown, save where the 
undying dandelion showed his tob-frequent head 
and bloomed, but which is now moist and thick, 
and of as lively and as grateful a green as a cloth 
of emerald velvet. This is the dear paradise of 
the birds when the Sabbath shuts it out from hu- 
man intrusion. Here the great ironclad of a rook 
comes sailing down, wheeling in close irregular 
order with his fellows but never once colliding 
with them, and always laying his head to the 
wind before the dumps himself to the ground. 
Here the thrushes, handsome and lustrous-eyed 
glide along the turf, and play the tug-of-w r ar 
with many a hapless worm. Here the thrush’s 
less frequent and more timid cousin — the last to 
venture, and the first to fly — the glossy blackbird 
darts stealthily into view, now stooping to ply 
his orange beak, now nervously lifting his head to 
catch the first sight or sound of approaching dan- 
ger, and now with needless fear skimming the 
quiet lawn, and making’pstraight for a bushy 
concealment, uttering as he goes those sharp stac- 
cato cries of alarm that startle while they please 
the ear, they seem so like a martial challenge. 
The yellow and the pied wagtails are gone, with 
their ceaseless pulsations, their shrill, pitiful notes 
and their swift, devious trespass about the grass 
as they snap now right now left, with their uner- 
ring beaks at the light insects sporting for them 
in the sun. But the plentiful, perkey sparro w is 
here, and hops— I wish he could be evolutionized 
into a walk— hops impudently about, so noisily 
in evidence with his tuneless “cheep, cheep” that 
I think the poor crumpled moth with which he 
flies off must be as silly in the sunlight as we 
know him to be in the candlelight. 
And here, as I say, in busy numbers come my 
friends the starlings and it is the starlings I have 
been specially watching. I know them of old. 
When I was a boy I both admired and envied them 
Far in the autumn, when I rambled amongst the 
Southdown slopes, where the mild black-faced 
sheep cropped the dwarf grass that is so conducive 
to tenderness in mutton, the starlings were there 
in hundreds, the undisturbed companions of the 
fleecy flocks. They run about fearless amongst 
the bleating sheep, and I thought it must be the 
end of all their careless joy when they mounted 
the ' sheep’s soft back and burrowed their beaks 
in the woolly coat as they gaily rode along. The 
shepherd with his crook was my friend, and many 
a time, not telling him of my thoughts, I 
have sat down with him on a furzy back and com- 
pared hitn with the shepherd that stood at home 
on the mantelpiece. But friend as the shepherd 
was to me, lending me his crook to catch a sheep 
i or a lamb at. my will, he was a greater friend 
