Page:The Zoologist, 4th series, vol 2 (1898).djvu/360

328 instantly despatched it, literally pulling it to pieces, amidst a general tumult. Dr. Wood was unable to say whether the victim, upon which judgment was summarily dealt, had been previously injured, or was otherwise imperfect." With a diseased pity for evil-doers who incur severe penalties, our soul goes out to that Rook.

There are many other interesting observations and facts in avian life to be found in this small volume. A Cuckoo was found a prisoner in a Redbreast's nest at Ackworth Court, the nest being so encompassed by ivy-growth as to make it necessary to cut away the stems in order to liberate the mighty fledgling. The importance of a Heron to a Trout-stream is amply verified by the statement that "out of the gullet of a Heron, shot at Ackworth in 1890, fell three Trout, each of about half a pound in weight."

This list appears to have been made with care, and is much more than a mere inventory.

not announced on the title-page, this 'Guide' has been edited and largely written by Mr. G.W. Murdoch, who conducts the natural history columns of the 'Yorkshire Weekly Post.' Besides its natural beauty, Lakeland will ever remain classic with the name of Wordsworth, while De Quincey first drew attention to the evidences of a prolonged Norse or, as he expressed it, Danish occupation of the district. The poet Gray is generally credited with having "discovered" the Lake District, which he visited in 1769, and described in his 'Tour in the Lakes;' but, as Mr. Murdoch observes in his introduction, "it was neither industrial progress nor Gray the poet that 'opened up' the Lake District, but Wordsworth, Southey, the Coleridges (father and son), Wilson ('Christopher North'), De Quincey, and afterwards Mrs. Hemans, Harriet Martineau, Dr. Arnold (of Rugby), James Spedding, and (in many ways one of the most charming of all that brilliant intellectual galaxy) the gifted Dorothy Wordsworth."

We are not, however, principally concerned with literature—in its restricted meaning—in these pages, nor with Border raids