港 fish," exclaimed one, "they can swim | blush to have to say this of the beauunder the water." Our fairness in tiful creatures whose soaring flight, trade is also commented upon in a very sweet song, brave journeyings, endue complimentary way. Unfortunately the their lives with fanciful emotion when wily Chinaman takes advantage of this. we watch them from the artist's or the I heard from the Lhassa chiefs, and poet's point of view; but it is, alas, many Tibetans on the road, that there too true, and in an ornithologist's recwas at Ta-chien-lu a shop kept by Eu-ord must be confessed the birds, for glish merchants. When I arrived in all their aspirations, are subject to the this town I hunted up the shop, to find mundane consideration of ways and the goods English but the shopmen means. The pressing necessity of Chinese, passing themselves off as my knowing where the next meal is to countrymen. When will genuine Eu- come from is ever upon them. Very glish merchants be able to trade openly few are as provident even as the rooks, with this people, and from India direct? who, on rare occasions, do lay by a It is a strange fact that at the close store of acorns under the leaves in the of the nineteenth century this country wood, yet only so seldom as just tole of only partly civilized people, and situ- prove the rule of the thriftlessness of ated on the very borders of our great birds. But though they do not husIndian Empire, scemingly defies inter- band any of the wild harvests so bouncourse with all Europeans, and closes tifully prepared for their needs, the its frontiers to Western travellers and birds are not altogether improvident. merchants alike. That its powerful Although the next meal has to be gotneighbor to the east pulls the wires, ten each time the need for it is felt, little or no doubt can be held. A com- the birds exercise some prevision and bination of nations, the exercise of a know where, cach in its season, the little firmness, and without shedding a necessary foods may be sought. This drop of blood, Tibet, now so inaccessi- in itself is a science involving a deble, would be opened up and a time of tailed knowledge of the flora and fauna security and prosperity heralded for its of many lands, and of the fly-lines inhabitants, the absence of which they which safely carry winged creatures now but with too much justice deplore. far over land and sea. How the birds My servant shortly ago naïvely re-learn it all is a mystery; but so great marked to me, "My country is greater is the importance of this branch of than yours! I, a little Tibetan, have knowledge and so wide the ramificabeen through your great dependencies, tions which it involves, that it is no India and Canada; I have travelled all wonder little heads can carry little else over Great Britain, and, when I return of thought. Grubs, worms, insects, home, shall have been round the world. larvæ, rats, mice, frogs, lizards, fish, Your countrymen cannot even enter seeds, and nuts and berries, and tenmy country. Are they not ashamed of der shoots of leaf and grass-how, tlhis ? ANNIE R. TAYLOR. when, and where - these are the things the sweet creatures with the silver flute and the swishing wings are thinking of, though they may look as wise as the old barn owls, as sentimental as the nightingales, or as fantastic as the harlequinading tits. NOTE. - Since the above was written the Sikkim Tibet Convention has been signed, which will enable traders to meet at Yatung on the Tibetan side of the frontier. British subjects are to be allowed to reside at this place after May 1st, and trade is to be unrestricted, except in regard to certain specified articles, for five years.-A. R. T. From The Cornhill Magazine. THE chief object in a bird's life seems to be the getting of food. I tra Such thoughts as these it is, when winter battens down the stones with layers of sheet ice, that prompt each unit of the myriad host of Arctic birds that flock southward in the autumn to seek fresh woods and pastures new. Food provision is the object for which birds periodically change their | ate climates are affected by the seadwelling-places. The sovereigus, the sonal changes, though in less degree, bishops, the barons of old and media-indirectly through the influence of cold val times, when they had exhausted and heat upon their food supplies the resources of one estate, moved ou | rather than by effect of cold upon their to another. This was the reason of well-protected bodies. A coat of mail the constant journeyings of our ances- is not to be compared to a coat of tors in the days gone by when each feathers for safety so far as a bird's. district provided for its own needs. life is concerned. Layer upon layer of The fashion, among birds, still prevails. down and feathers can withstand Hence the great waves of bird life con- almost any amount of water or any stantly ebbing and flowing high up in degree of cold; in proof of this, seethe ocean of air; hence the regular mi- how the delicate tern, after wintering grations so wonderful in the distances in comparatively mild weather, go back and dangers little birds compass in to the ice-floes of the Polar Sea and lay their long flights over thousands of their eggs on the bare ice. For two or miles; hence the fitful fittings which, three weeks the tender breast of the on a smaller scale, distinguish even the sea-swallow is pressed against a cold birds that are classified as stationary block of ice! Again, as another exspecies. ample of the influence of food rather than climate in governing bird actions, take the colony of beccaficos at Worthing. The beccafico is a Mediterranean bird common on the southern shores of Spain and Italy, in the Grecian Islands, Sicily and Malta, and on the northern shores of Africa. Formerly it was quite unknown in the British Isles, but some years ago a large orchard of figtrees was planted near Brighton and In the summer wild luxuriance of the beccaficos have discovered the fact forest, field, and fen, shoals of fish in and come over to share the spoil. the great rivers and the deep blue sea, Doubtless the nightingales told them swarms of insects flying in dense clouds the story of English figs and showed over fjeld and fjord and steppe, and them the way; be this as it may, the birds in teeming multitudes -sea birds, little birds from the warm shores of river birds, sand birds, hill-loving birds, the Mediterranean bid fair to become Wood-haunting birds, field birds, birds established as naturalized British subbig and birds little, myriad hosts of jects. It is possible that the circumbirds. In the winter frozen seas, ice-scribed fly-line of the nightingale might bound rivers, iron hills, snow-clad for- be accounted for by the absence of ests, snowy fields, no fish, no insects, no seeds, no berries, no worms visible even to sharp bird eyes, therefore no There is no food at all left for the birds in the higher arctic regions in winter; plants, fish, insects are killed or buried in the ice and snow; the vast hordes of lemmings, little creatures near akin to the voles that have made such ravages on the sheep farms of Southern Scotland of late years, leave these high latitudes; there is nothing left even for birds of prey. birds. some favorite insects in the lands beyond that western boundary which it so persistently delimits. It is certain that temperature alone cannot account for the fact that nightingales are found on the eastern side of a line drawn through Exeter and York, and contin In the countries bordering on the Polar Seas, where the changing seasons bring alternately the two extremes of dearth and plenty, birds are more ued considerably further north and numerous in the short summer than anywhere else all the world over, and in winter absent altogether. All are migrants there by force of circum south, while throughout its entire length the west of this frontier is forbidden ground. The countries bordering upon the Arctic circle are extreme examples of In like manuer the birds of temper- the influence of food supply upon mi stance. gration. It is not less interesting to legged stilts, plump ringed plovers, trace it where more partial causes produce less impartial results. waders many, oyster-catchers quaint, ugly hooded crows, gulls and tern and ducks, are not slow to take advantage of the fact. To the seas that wash our shores - waters kept tempered by the gentle office of the Gulf Stream, and by the rule of the road which orders that the currents of warm water from the south shall flow on the surface, while the cold streams from the North Pole must travel deep below -come fleets of true seafarers. These fisheries are open all the year round, and Arctic gulls and skuas, divers, auks, puffins, razorbills, kittiwakes, tern, gaunets, cormorants, come over and join our fishing birds. England in winter is a land of plenty compared with the stricken home of bird refugees from the far north. Our inland waters are seldom frozen over, our seas never, and upon their hospitable shores large flocks of sea and water fowl that have journeyed from the Liakofs, Nova Zembla, and Spitzbergen, from dreary wastes beside the Obi, the Petchora, and the Dvina, from all the lone interminable coasts of Scandinavia, Russia, Siberia, find sanctuary and food. On the shores of islands like Malta, that are composed entirely of hard rock and where the sea-bottom is rocky for some miles also, Inland, too, we have stores of bird there is not that teeming insect life food in winter. Very seldom indeed is that we find so abundantly on our sea the ground so hard frozen that the borders; few birds dwell on such rooks and the thrushes cannot probe it shores. All round the British Isles, with their long bills and find here a on the contrary, the formation is very worm and there a grub, and there the varied, and long stretches of sand, larva of some bright butterfly. And thick layers of mud, deep beds of earth, there are always the beautiful wild alternate with rock beaches, where fruits; the harvests of wild orchards easily disintegrating sandstone, soft that grow free for the birds - English gault, and stiff clay crop up among the berries, red, white, and blue. The harder formations. I wonder if the berry-bearing plants of our woods and birds know anything of geology. Each hedges are most bountiful. Good oldplant that bears fruit for them, each fashioned hedges, where the hips and grub in the ploughed fields, knows its haws redden high up and the brambles own particular kinds of earth as well trail over, and sloe and privet and elder as the tiny creatures on the seashores, grow thick, afford many a feast to the and refuses to colonize in any others; field birds, and foster the bird-life that a plover might as well look for wire- is so essential to the wellbeing of the worms in rich leaf-mould, or a thrush farmer's crops. The value of these seek for the berries of the wayfaring beautiful old hedges is scarcely appretree in a Middlesex lane, as a sand-ciated as it should be in these days of piper hope to find good cheer in the high farming. In the first place, they bay where St. Paul's shipmates cast afford protection to the crops from the four anchors out of the stern, "fearing wind. Have you ever noticed how lest they should have fallen upon thick and strong the grass grows in a rocks." So much at least the birds hayfield to the leeward of a brave know, and when they come in lovely hedge? For an acre or more all along flocks to winter on our river estuaries, the line that is something more than a oozy mud-banks, and golden sands, it boundary, the crop is twice as heavy is in full expectation of the feast that as out in the middle of the mead. The awaits them. Tiny fish, small molluscs unbroken screen of greenery has sheland crustaceæ, sand-eels, mud-worms, tered it. This is the moral of that tale shrimps, larvæ, sandboys, all manner of a wayfaring man who caught cold of marine insects swarm on our beaches by sleeping in a field with the gateh in winter as in summer. Delicate san- open. And in cherishing the birds, derlings, godwits, turnstones, long- hedges do still better service - real hedges, long thickets of flower and grant singers. Many of them, like the leaf, of crimson berry and matted swallows, eat only such things as they thorn. In the spring the birds nest can catch in their swift flight openthere-birds that must catch destruc-mouthed through the air; these are tive insects by the hundred to provide few and far between in the raw and food for the hedgerow nestlings; in cold atmosphere of winter here. Swift the autumn for the berries the birds and swallow, nightingale and cuckoo, come, and gladly stay to eat the insects warbler, wheatear, winchat, blackcap, that are harbored there. Even in win-wryneck, flycatcher - all the merry ter there are plenty of insects for birds troupe of strolling singers, must follow in England. Spiders under the dead the sun and the creatures that dance leaves and broken boughs, beetles at in the sunbeams to lands that are sunny the foot of the wall where the black-in winter. birds are catching snails and breaking their shells on a big stone, but the berries are spread more lavishly than all else for the birds' winter faring. Vermilion beads on the rowan-trees, these are all eaten up first, and sometimes most improvidently early are they finished; then the elder berries and the hips and haws; but plenty still are left for harder times. Coral pink corymbs on the wayfaring tree wherever chalk downs undulate in softly distant waves; ivy and mistletoe berries in the woods, some always left till the early spring; privet and yew; bilberry and whortleberry hills for the game birds; and many more, like the square berries of the skewer tree, little known except to the birds and the gipsies. on the The movements of the birds that come and of the birds that go in spring and autumn are prompted by the abundance or the scarcity of certain kinds of food among the varied store our land affords. The nomadic wanderings of our resident birds are also foraging expeditions. Only in the spring and the early summer are any birds able to find the food they require in one particular neighborhood. Then insect life abounds, and round about the nestingplace enough and to spare is to be found both for the busy parent birds and the insatiable chicks and squabs. But in the autumn and winter there is, strictly speaking, no such thing as a stationary population of birds in any place. Then all turn gipsies, and hither and thither wend their restless way, eluding the famine of a frost here, the dearth of a snowstorm there, or the buffeting of storm winds, by continually moving on. Little wonder that the birds from a land of famine come to winter here. Fieldfares, redwings, bramblings, buntings, larks, siskins, finches, starlings, thrushes, blackbirds, robins, wrens, tits, redstarts, pigeons, crows, game The first of these wanderings takes birds come to divide the spoil with our place when the corn-fields ripen their resident species. golden store, and flocks of birds go But there are some birds that depend | thither to steal or to glean. Sparrows almost entirely for their means of sub-from the cities, finches from the copses, sistence upon the light-winged sum- pigeons from the woods, travel for mer flies that love the sunshine. These many miles to spend a season in the the economy of our cold season does harvest-fields, and gather there in hunnot provide for. The tree-creepers and dreds of thousands. Later these travthe tits, insectivorous in their propen-elling companies visit all the low-lying sities, are content to seek food in the fields, the water meadows and marshy erevices of bark up and down the branches of old trees, in the cracks of walls, in and out among the stones and bricks of old buildings, peering, probing, pecking at the creatures that have thought to get safely through the cold weather by hiding. Not so our miVOL. II. 56 LIVING AGE. lands, where there is always an abundance of small creatures. As the day lengthens and the cold strengthens these journeys all tend in one direction - to the south, and especially to those southern counties that lie to the westward. All through the winter there From Macmillan's Magazine. CROMWELL'S VETERANS IN FLANDERS. are twice as many robins in the southern half of England as in the summer, and in the northern counties but few IN a former paper a brief account are to be seen. This any one may was given of the great design conobserve in his own garden; twice as ceived by Cromwell against Spain almany tits and wrens, and blackbirds most immediately upon his accession to and thrushes, and chaffinches, too, the Protectorate, and of the opening even without taking count of those attack on the Spanish West Indies.1 that have come from over the seas. The operations were planned, as beThese wandering flocks of birds may came the greatest naval power in be seen passing through various dis- Europe, to be carried on principally at tricts. One day in the fields a great sea; and while one fleet was busy in concourse of thrushes, the next not the West Indies, a second was cruisone to be seen; one week on the hill- ing off the Spanish coast. The latter, side numberless larks, and the next after months of weary waiting, at last they are gone as surely as the migra- reaped its reward in Blake's great victory wheatears. Often these passing tory and capture of the Spanish plateflocks of home birds precede cold fleet at Teneriffe on the 20th of April, weather. The birds are great weather 1657. But meanwhile Cromwell's agprophets, and people who are much out gression had driven Spain to take to of doors-shepherds, sailors, garden- her heart all his bitterest enemies, and know by experience that their chief among these the exiled Kingle flittings presage a change of wind and Charles the Second. The Protector® weather; for the birds do not wait to then began to look for an ally, as the be overtaken by famine-they exer- war seemed likely to be carried on cise prevision. Often some time before nearer home. He had already (9th cold weather sets in over the counties September, 1655) concluded a treaty farther north, the fields and lanes and with France, and he now (March, 1657, the cliffs by the sea in Devonshire and N.S.) expanded this treaty into an Cornwall are crowded with birds. offensive and defensive alliance. It so th Such multitudes of rooks and starlings, fell out that the famous Red-coats and thrushes and finches, and all small made their first appearance on the fowl, go down to the West Country in continent of Europe side by side with winter weather. And why? Because the French, and under supreme comthere is always an abundance of bird mand of the great Marshal Turenne. food in the soft and balmy weather that proclaims open house and an open winter there. ers No little bird need fold its wings and idly face starvation; no little bird need sit on a tree-top and smile at grief. Some few are found dead from cold and starvation each year, it is true; but among all the hundreds of millions of birds that survive these are only exceptions that prove the rule. Often they are old birds. Perhaps, after long years of restless going to and fro, their wings are weary, and their hearts have failed them at the thought of more travelling, for the life of a bird is a very Odyssey of Wanderings. Of the protracted negotiations which preceded the conclusion of this alliance nothing need be said, except that they were conducted by William Lockhart, who had been himself sometime an ensign in the French army, had afterwards fought on the losing side at Preston, and soon after taken service with the victorious Cromwell. What difficulty he had to gain his treaty, point by point, from the trickery of Mazarin, how he outraged his Scotch conscience by going to a royal ball on a Sunday sooner than risk failure, and how ultimately he achieved success, all this must remain buried in the recesses of Thurloe's State papers. The terms of the treaty stipulated that the French 1 LIVING AGE, No. 2591, p. 539. |