"How sweet a thing is love! Sweet as the rose, Fragrant as flowers, fair as the sunlight beaming! Only the Sooty Oyster-Catcher knows How sweet to us, as there we lingered dreaming. "Dear, all the secret's ours. The Sharp-tailed Stint Spied, but he will not tell--though you and I Paid Cupid's debts from Love's own golden mint, While Yellow-Bellied Shrike-Tits fluttered nigh. "The Honey-eaters heard; the Fuscous--yea, The Warty-faced, the Lunulated, too; But this kind feathered tribe will never say What words you said to me, or I to you. "The golden bloom was glorious in the furze, And gentle twittering came from out the copses; It was the Carinated Flycatchers, Or else the black Monarcha melanopsis. "That day our troth we plighted--blissful hour, Beginning of a joy a whole life long! And while the wide world seemed to be in flower, The Chestnut-rumped Ground-Wren burst forth in song." It surely would not be amiss if the Bird Observers' Clubs throughout Australia, and the Royal Australasian Ornithologists' Union, enlisted the aid of the State Education Departments, and endeavored to find out what names the children use for the birds of their district. Executive committees upon bird names are good; but a good name is not evoked by arguments in committee. It ofttimes comes from the happy inspiration of some child who loves the bird. At present the names given by classifiers are often an offence. A few evenings ago I was charmed with an unaccustomed song coming from out a big pittosporum tree in my garden at Kew. I took careful note of the little warbler, and then consulted Mr. Leach's _Descriptive List_. Judge of my satisfaction when I found that my little friend was "The Striated Field Wren or Stink Bird"! The Australian boy is responding splendidly to the Nature-study movement. Bird observers tell me that shy native birds, formerly unknown near the haunts of men, are making their appearance, feeling safer now from molestation. Nest hunting for the sake of egg spoliation is happily becoming rarer, although children are developing keener eyes for nests. To-day every country school has its nests under loving observation for the purposes of bird-study and of bird-protection. Walt Whitman might have been describing many a Victorian school boy when he wrote-- "And every day the he-bird, to and fro, near at hand, And every day the she-bird, crouched on her nest, silent, with bright eyes, And every day, I, a curious boy, never too close, never disturbing them, Cautiously peering, absorbing, translating."