29 JULY 1893, Page 3

Mr. Digby Pigott, writing to the Times of Thursday, gives

a charming idyll of the lake in St. James's Park. On the 8th of this month a dabchick'a nest, " made fast to the dipping boughs of a black-poplar," broke from its moorings and drifted into the open. " The hen-bird, who was sitting at the time of the accident, stuck bravely to her eggs, and in a twelve-days' voyage, during which her mate has been seldom out of her sight, has crossed and recrossed from the peninsula, to the mainland." Her constancy was rewarded, and on Wednesday afternoon " she floated safe in port with two newly hatched balls of down on her back, within a, yard or two of the spot where her raft was first. built."