286 
A YEAR WITH THE BIRDS. 
to follow our author’s example, our chief hope of recruits 
must be in the children and young people. And here we 
cordially agree with the Oxford Tutor when he says, “ I hold 
it to be an unquestioned fact that the direction of children’s 
attention to natural objects is one of the most valuable 
processes in education. When these children, or at least 
the boys among them, go away to their respective public 
schools, they will find themselves in the grip of a system of 
compulsory game-playing which will effectually prevent any 
attempt at patient observation. There is, doubtless, some¬ 
thing to be said for this system, though in my opinion there 
is much more to be said against it ; but the fact is beyond 
question that it is doing a great deal to undermine and 
destroy some of the Englishman’s most valuable habits and 
characteristics, and among others his acuteness of obser¬ 
vation, in which, in his natural state, he excels all other 
nationalities. It is all the more necessary that we should 
teach our children, before they leave home, some of the 
simplest and most obvious lessons of natural history.” 
The book then proceeds to deal with Oxford birds in such 
a way that any reader, young or old, is enabled to recognise 
some of the most interesting species to be met with in the 
precincts of the city, and of course in other places too. The 
year is divided broadly into two seasons, winter—including 
the whole period from October to March; and summer— 
including all the warm season, from the commencement of 
Term time in April up to the heart of the Long Vacation. 
The familiar English names of the birds are invariably used, 
though for accuracy’s sake a list of their scientific names is 
given in an appendix. 
As specimens of the author’s style and treatment of the 
subject we give the following extracts :— 
“ When we return to Oxford after our Long Vacation the only 
summer migrants that have not departed southwards are a few 
Swallows, to be seen along the bauks of the river, and two or three 
lazy Martins that may cling for two or three weeks longer to their 
favourite nooks about the buildings of Merton or Magdalen. Last 
year (1884) none of these stayed to see November, so far as I could 
ascertain: but they were arrested on the south coast by a spell of real 
warm weather, where the genial sun was deluding the liobins and 
Sparrows into fancying the winter already past. In some years they 
may be seen on sunny days, even up to the end of the first week of 
November, hawking for flies about the meadow-front of Merton— 
probably the warmest spot in Oxford. White, of Selborne, saw one 
as late as the 20th of November, on a very sunny warm morning, in 
one of the quadrangles of Christchurch. 
“It is at first rather sad to find silence reigning in the thickets and 
reed-beds that were alive with songsters during the Summer Term. 
The familiar pollards and thorn bushes, where the Willow Warblers 
