THE GARDEN CENSUS.
It is the engaging habit of some countrymen to keep a census of the birds that visit their garden and of those that nest there. Among such records as I have heard or seen lately the tale of the urban dweller most astonishes me. For example : last year, in a small garden in St. John's Wood, appeared a number of the migrant warblers, including the ehiffchaff and willow warbler, and wagtails, beside the commoner home birds, in- cluding the brown owl. The very longest list known to me conies from a friend in Hampshire, where on just an acre of ground sixty-five species of birds have been marked down in the carefully kept .register. It would add to the interest of such lists if mammals were included. How few are so much as noticed—hedgehogs, shrews, voles and various sorts of mice I Twice while waiting for a front door to be opened I have seen the smallest of all mammals, the harvest mouse, appear from the neighbourhood of the boot-scraper. The dainty little beast . is as well worth attraction and feeding—it will feed from the hand—as any of the common birds.
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