"A YEAR WITH THE BIRDS."*

DESULTORY essays such as these, dealing with some branch of

natural history and coloured by local associations, have a peculiar charm of their own. This charm has been universally

recognised in the case of The Natural History of Selborne, a book that makes the story of Nature's small economies as interesting as a fairy-tale. The chapter on the field-cricket, even to one who has never set eyes on that curious creature, is as fascinating as Hans Andersen's "Ugly Duckling" or "Bold Tin Soldier." How one longs to visit the home of the crickets, that "steep abrupt pasture-field" of which White speaks, interspersed with furze, close to the back of this village (Selborne), well known by the name of the " Short Lithe." It is difficult to say in what this charm consists ; but we may safely say that the union of a cultured sympathetic character with keen and patient habits of observation is an important element in the charm, and an element sufficiently rare to account for the lack of rivals to White's fame. This little volume, by "An Oxford Tutor," possesses the peculiar charm to which we have referred in no

small measure.

Of the six chapters, two are devoted to Oxford City and its birds, one to the lower Alps, two to a Midland village, and the remaining one to the birds of Virgil. The pleasantest of these pleasant chapters is, we think, that entitled "Oxford, Spring and Early Summer," which is pervaded by the fas- cinating tribe of birds known as the "warblers." By all bird- lovers, some of the eight or nine little migrants who go by this name are sure to be well known. They attract us no less by the delicate finish and beauty of their forms and the mystery that hangs over the migration across stormy seas of such fragile creatures, than by the beauty and variety of their songs. The chiff-chaff, which is the smallest of the warblers, and the first to reach our shores, is a prime favourite with "An Oxford Tutor." "Not even the first twitter of the swallow," he says, "or the earliest song of the nightingale, has the same hopeful story to tell me as this delicate traveller who dares the East wind and the frost." The whole picture of this little bird's arrival in our woods," when the first breath of spring brings the c,elandine into bloom on the hedge-bank," is drawn with much quiet beauty and minuteness of observation. The wonderfully mellow song of the black-cap, the odd pranks of the white-throat, and the mocking powers of the sedge warbler are touched upon with equal happiness. Take, for in- stance, this description of the ways of the greater white-throat :—

"As we walk along, a rough grating sound, something like the noise of a diminutive corn-crake, is heard on the other side of the hedge ; stopping when we stop, and sounding ahead of us as we walk on. This is the teasing way uf the greater white-throat, and it means that he is either building a nest in the hedge, or thinking of doing so. If you give him time, however, he will show himself, flirting up to the top of the hedge, crooning, craking, and popping into it again ; then flying out a little way, cheerily singing a soft and truly warbling song, with fluttering wings and roughened feathers, and then, perhaps, perching on a twig to repeat it."

This kind of character-painting is just what the tyro wants to help him to a knowledge of birds.

A favourite station of the author's, from which to watch the birds, is the bridge at Parson's Pleasure, i.e., the cool, shady bathing-place on the Cherwell which goes by that name. Here, he says, we may in the summer "listen to the nightingale, or watch the red-starts and fly-catchers in the willows, or feast our eyes with the splendid deep and glossy black-blue of the swallow's back, as he darts up and down beneath the bridge in doubtful weather." Here are the water-hens paddling in and out of the reeds, and that daintiest member of the wagtail clan, the grey wagtail, "walking into the gentle water slope, or running lightly over the islands of dead leaves. Here, too, in the deep reed-beds, as in the Paradise of Birds,—

" The reed-warbler swung in a nest with her young, Deep-sheltered and warm from the wind."

To the keen eye of the writer of these essays, this little elbow of the Cherwell is a paradise of birds in itself.

Turning to the chapters on a Midland village, we find in the second of these an admirable account of the nightingale, the

• A Year with the Birds. By "An Oxford Tutor." -Oxford ; Blackwell. London : Siospkin and Marshal!. "impassioned recitative" of whose song is evidently described by a musician :— " I never yet," says the author, "heard the nightingale singing dolefully, as the poet will have it sing ; its varied phrases are all given out con brio, and even that marvellous crescendo on a single note, which no other bird attempts, conveys to the mind of the listener the fiery intensity of the high-strung singer. If I were asked how to distinguish his song from the rest, I should be inclined to tell my questioner to wait by a wood-side, till he is fairly startled by a bird that puts his whole ardent soul into his song."

Wordsworth thought the same when he spoke of the "tumul- tuous harmony and fierce" of this bird-song. To the present writer, on the contrary, "that marvellous crescendo on a single note "—or, as Coleridge has it, that "one low piping note more sweet than all "—is infinitely sad. In a very interesting note to this chapter, an attempt is made to show the relation that the music of the birds bears to our own, but with the prefatory remark that their music is of a totally different kind to ours.

We should like to know whether those who are unable to distinguish tunes are similarly debarred from distinguishing between the songs of different bir ls. The last chapter, that on the birds of Virgil, brings t gether, and gossips in a scholarly way about, some pet pass ages, chiefly taken from the Georgics and Eclogues. The picture of the birds taking heart after the storm is alone sufficient to vindicate the old poet's claims to be a true lover and observer of the birds. Every one who knows his Virgil is acquainted with the passage:—

" Trim liquidas corvi presso ter gutture voces, Ant csater ingeminant, et sa3pe onbilibus altis Nescio qua preeter solitum dulcedine laeti, Inter se in foliis strepitant ; javat imbribus actis Progeniem parvam dulcefque revisere natos."

A Year with the Birds is not a book that we can do justice to by quotation and extracts ; it is a book to take up and ramble over at one's leisure. As on a pleasant country walk, now we find ourselves thridding the grassy "rides" of the deep woods, "where the titmice come crooning around you, appearing suddenly, and vanishing you hardly know how or whither, and wood-pigeons dash out of the trees with that curious impetuosity of theirs, as if they were suddenly sent for on most pressing business ;" now, on the other hand, we are amid the rich luxuriance of the water-meadows ; and then, again in the freshening air, we are pressing our way through the thistles and scattered furze-bushes of the breezy upland pastures. We heartily commend this little book to all who love a country ramble in kindly, thoughtful, and scholarly company.