shopper
warbler (_Locustella naevia_)[d], waxwing (_Ampelis garrulus_), twite
(_Linota flavirostris_), hen harrier (_Circus cyaneus_), buzzard (_Buteo
vulgaris_), redshank (_Totanus calidris_), greenshank (_Totanus
cunescens_) and the little auk (_Mergulus alle_).

The lapwing is thought to be increasing in numbers; the writer
frequently observed considerable flocks during his recent rambles in the
county. Finches are perhaps as numerous in Hertfordshire as in any other
county of equal size; the large flocks of hen chaffinches that haunt the
farmyards in winter being quite a notable feature. The goldfinch, it is
to be feared, is rapidly becoming scarcer; as are also the jay, the
woodcock and other birds much more numerous a few years back. Fieldfares
and redwings visit the county in great numbers from the N. during the
winter; one morning in the winter of 1886 the writer saw many thousands
of fieldfares pass over St. Albans from the direction of Luton. The
redwing, being largely insectivorous, is often picked up dead in the
fields when the frost is unusually severe and food proportionally
difficult to obtain.

The presence of many woods and small streams attracts a good proportion
of the smaller English migrants; the nightingale and the cuckoo are
heard almost throughout the county. Moorhens, coots and dabchicks are
abundant; the reed-sparrow is heard only in a few districts. Titmice,
great, blue and long-tailed, are well distributed.

V. POPULATION

Comparatively little peculiar to the county is known of the early
inhabitants of Hertfordshire. They seem from the earliest times to have
been scattered over the county in many small groups, rather than to have
concentrated at a few centres. Singularly enough, this almost uniform
dispersion of population is still largely maintained, for, unlike so
many other counties, Hertfordshire has not within its borders a single
large town. The larger among them, _i.e._, Watford, St. Albans, Hitchin,
Hertford and Bishop's Stortford, are not collectively equal in
population to even such towns as Bolton, Halifax or Croydon. Another
feature to be noted is that, owing to the county's proximity to London,
it is now the home of persons of many nations and tongues, and only in
the smaller villages between the railroads are there left any traits of
local character or peculiarities of idiom. It is hardly necessary to say
that this conglomeration of peoples is common to all the home counti