tle for a
man on a bicycle as they do for a cow. Not long ago a peewit trotted
leisurely across the road not more than ten yards from my front wheel;
and on the same day I came upon a green woodpecker enjoying a dust-bath
in the public road. He declined to stir until I stopped to watch him,
then merely flew about a dozen yards away and attached himself to the
trunk of a fir tree at the roadside and waited there for me to go. Never
in all my wanderings afoot had I seen a yaffingale dusting himself like
a barn-door fowl!

It is not seriously contended that birds can be observed narrowly in
this easy way; but even for the most conscientious field naturalist the
wheel has its advantages. It carries him quickly over much barren ground
and gives him a better view of the country he traverses; finally, it
enables him to see more birds. He will sometimes see thousands in a day
where, walking, he would hardly have seen hundreds, and there is joy in
mere numbers. It was just to get this general rapid sight of the bird
life of the neighbouring hilly district of Hampshire that I was at
Newbury on the last day of October. The weather was bright though very
cold and windy, and towards evening I was surprised to see about twenty
swallows in Northbrook Street flying languidly to and fro in the shelter
of the houses, often fluttering under the eaves and at intervals sitting
on ledges and projections. These belated birds looked as if they wished
to hibernate, or find the most cosy holes to die in, rather than to
emigrate. On the following day at noon they came out again and flew up
and down in the same feeble aimless manner.

Undoubtedly a few swallows of all three species, but mostly
house-martins, do "lie up" in England every winter, but probably very
few survive to the following spring. We should have said that it was
impossible that any should survive but for one authentic instance in
recent years, in which a barn-swallow lived through the winter in a
semi-torpid state in an outhouse at a country vicarage. What came of
the Newbury birds I do not know, as I left on the 2nd of November--tore
myself away, I may say, for, besides meeting with people I didn't know
who treated a stranger with sweet friendliness, it is a town which
quickly wins one's affections. It is built of bricks of a good deep rich
red--not the painfully bright red so much in use now--and no person has
had the bad taste to spoil the harmony by introducing stone and stu