wing to
the previous defoliation of the tree, which is weakened and is unable
to mature healthy fruit buds. At Aldington, in a hot summer, the
cuckoos used to call nearly all night, and I have heard them when it
was quite dark.

For some years, until 1918, goldfinches were quite common in Hampshire
and Dorsetshire. I have seen a flock of over forty together. I had
seven nests on my premises here one summer; they go on breeding very
late, and I have found their nests with young birds half-fledged while
summer-pruning apple trees in August. They come into my garden close
to the windows in May, after the ripening seeds of the myosotis
(forget-me-not) in the spring-bedding. I never remember seeing a
goldfinch at Aldington, which should show that the thistles were well
under control, for the seed is a great attraction. One often hears the
practice of allowing thistles to run to seed condemned as criminal,
for everybody knows that each thistle-down, carried by the wind,
contains a seed, and that the attachment of a light structure of
plumes is one of Nature's methods of ensuring dissemination. But, in
Worcestershire, it is always asserted that thistle seed will not
germinate--I am referring to _Cnicus arvensis_--and it is said that a
prize of L50 offered for a seedling thistle remains unclaimed to this
day. I failed, myself, in trying to obtain young plants from seeds
sown in a flower-pot, and I have never seen a seedling in all the
thousands of miles I must have walked over young cornfields when my
men were hoeing.

I have heard an interesting story about rooks which were causing a
farmer much damage in a field newly sown with peas. He erected a small
shelter of hurdles, from which to shoot them, and for a time the
shelter was sufficient to scare them, until they got used to it; but,
when he entered it with his gun, they would not come near. Thinking to
deceive their sentinel, watching from a tree, he took a companion to
the shelter, who remained for a time and then left, but still no rooks
came near. The farmer then took two companions, and presently sent
them both away. The arithmetic was too much for the rooks, and the
scheme succeeded. He concluded that their powers of enumeration were
limited to counting "two," and that "three" was beyond them.

Nightingales are scarce in the Forest; they do not like the solitude
of the great woods, apparently preferring to inhabit roadsides and
places where people and traffic are c