e furze. But in spring and early summer their fresh light green
contrasts with masses of bright yellow gorse bloom. Just before
then--just as the first leaves are opening--the chiffchaffs come.

The first spring I had any knowledge of this spot was mild, and had been
preceded by mild seasons. The chiffchaffs arrived all at once, as it
seemed, in a bevy, and took possession of every birch about the furze,
calling incessantly with might and main. The willow-wrens were nearly
as numerous. All the gorse seemed full of them for a few days. Then by
degrees they gradually spread abroad, and dispersed among the hedges.

But in the following springs nothing of the kind occurred. Chiffchaff
and willow-wren came as usual, but they did not arrive in a crowd at
once. This may have been owing to the flight going elsewhere, or
possibly the flock were diminished by failure to rear the young broods
in so drenching a season as 1879, which would explain the difference
observed next spring. There was no scarcity, but there was a lack of the
bustle and excitement and flood of song that accompanied their advent
two years before.

Upon a piece of waste land at the corner of the furze a very large
cinder and dust heap was made by carting refuse there from the
neighbouring suburb. During the sharp and continued frosts of the winter
this dust-heap was the resort of almost every species of bird--sparrows,
starlings, greenfinches, and rooks searching for any stray morsels of
food. Some birdcatchers soon noticed this concourse, and spread their
nets among the adjacent rushes, but fortunately with little success.

I say fortunately, not because I fear the extinction of small birds, but
because of the miserable fate that awaits the captive. Far better for
the frightened little creature to have its neck at once twisted and to
die than to languish in cages hardly large enough for it to turn in
behind the dirty panes of the windows in the Seven Dials.

The happy greenfinch--I use the term of forethought, for the greenfinch
seems one of the very happiest of birds in the hedges--accustomed during
all its brief existence to wander in company with friends from bush to
bush, and tree to tree, must literally pine its heart out. Or it may be
streaked with bright paint and passed on some unwary person for a Java
sparrow or a "blood-heart."

The little boy who dares to take a bird's nest is occasionally fined and
severely reproved. The ruffian-like crew who