88 THE ESSEX NATURALIST:
elms and forest flowers, its green meadows, its sweet-scented
may and flowering chesnuts, its healthy atmosphere, its pleasant
landscapes, its advantageous position near the capital of the
world—all proclaim to us the fact that the Divine Being has
munificently surrounded us with blessings, and that it ought
and might be one of the happiest and most prosperous villages
in our isle."7
But times are changed. The Forest remains: and sufficient
old elm trees still stand elsewhere to show that Walthamstow
was once a well-wooded district: but those other glories—its
cornfields, its lanes, its "pleasant landscapes," its noble Georgian
mansions—are either gone entirely or persist in name only, or
are converted to other modern uses, undreamt of in the old
days when Benjamin Forster culled wild flowers in its lanes and
fields.
A FEEDING PLATFORM OF THE WOOD MOUSE.
By CHARLES NICHOLSON, F.E.S.
(Read 20th October, 1919.)
AT the end of my garden [at Hale End] runs an open pale
fence, covered with a thick growth of wild clematis, and
on the north side is a hawthorn hedge in which some years ago
I placed an old kettle for the benefit of our robins, of which they
have taken advantage every year until the present. I did not
clear the remains of the nest out of the kettle until very late
last year, and glancing at it one day during the winter I observed
that the kettle had been entirely filled up with "old man's beard,"
or the feathered fruits of the clematis. Suspecting the reason
I commenced to pull out the material, and almost immediately
four beautiful little wood mice shot out one after the other,
ran swiftly down the hawthorn stems to the ground, and dis-
appeared. I then emptied everything out of the kettle on to
the ground and left it.
Some weeks afterwards I discovered in the hedge about
two feet above the kettle, a bird's nest, which I had not previously
noticed, and on getting up to inspect it found that it had been
filled up with clematis fruits and was sprinkled with seed husks
7 "Walthamstow: Past, Present and Future," 1861, p.78.