WILD NATURE IN LONDON

I Know of nothing more absolutely sad to the true lover of nature than that gratuitous exhibition provided for the public, in a shop window in one of London's leading streets, of poor shivering new-fledged chicks which have been hatched by a patent incubator.

Through each terrible winter, exposed to view, are relays of chicks always of about the same size, wandering aimlessly in their enclosure, a picture of misery; sometimes they seek warmth by pressing their poor naked bodies against a hot tin pipe surrounded with rags-this is facetiously called their artificial mother. What an infernal parody of the hen gathering her brood under her warm wings! Surely this is a violation of that unwritten law which all chivalrous souls must hold, that life and love, even of the brute creation, must be respected, and if it be not respected there will be a corresponding loss of one's own self-respect. There can be no real need to hatch chickens in December or January.

By many this will be regarded as mere mawkish sentimentality; but this does not trouble me. The world is steadily losing that right appreciation of, and enthusiasm for, simple life and love; it is even ashamed of letting its tongue shape the word " love; " when once he or she has got out of its teens, and when that word has' finally been lost, and is no longer used at all, what a world it will be, what a complete hell here on earth! 'Tis the love of bird and flower, 'tis the love of child and home that keeps this world from utter rot; it is the salt that keeps all fresh and pure; abolish it, and decay sets in.

This protest, then, is timely, being needed; and my object now in this paper is to stir up interest in, and love for, the animal world around us, and in particular for the wild animal life of this London of ours. During the last few winter’s London has been visited by large flocks of gulls; flying up and down the river, backwards and forwards, from Greenwich to Hammersmith; they were constantly going, sometimes resting on the water, sometimes dashing head foremost down into the river as they detected some fish or other food floating down. Their advent was nearly simultaneous with the stoppage of the river steamers; but there is no doubt that the real cause of their coming and of their remaining was hard weather. My own first sight of them, three or four years ago, was on one morning in March when walking along the Thames Embankment. It was a wretched morning, cold and cheerless; I could barely see the banks of the opposite shore, the fog and mist being dense, and everything was a dismal slatey-grey, when, suddenly, in the direction of St. Paul's Cathedral, the sun peeped out, a great red ball in a golden mist; soon it gained more and more power, and then I saw, circling round and round, high above the gilded ball and cross that surmount the dome, a great flock ~~ certainly some thirty to forty ~~ of gulls. Slowly round and round they went, sailing in mid-air, hardly moving a wing, simply floating round in lovely