I have your second letter, not your first. The first may be lying in the Hotel at Las Palmas and I must attempt to get it. This year it is difficult to communicate with the "ciudad" for there has been a prolonged drought and the roads--but did you ever try cycling across a ploughed field? Moreover people here are lazy and casual and the semi-hispanised English people who keep the English hotels are perhaps more casual than the true Jack Spaniards. Well, I must get that letter, for which I thank in advance, even if it costs me a day's labour and some strong language. Meanwhile I will talk of canary birds. The birds are named after our islands. What our islands are named after, nobody, so I am told, knows for certain. Whether the birds are found wild in all the seven islands I don't know. Certainly there are many in Gran Canaria. Also there are many in Madeira. The wild canary is, I believe, always a dusky little chap, brown and green. The sulphur coloured or canary-coloured canary is, I am told, a work of art, and I have heard say that he was made at Norwich: by "made" of course I mean bred by human selection. The most highly priced canaries are, I believe, made in Germany. I have known two guineas asked for a "Hartz Mountain Canary": it sang _pp._ like a very sweet musical box. On the other hand, wild canaries are cheap here, especially if you go up country and buy of the boys who catch them. My wife quotes as a fair range of price half a peseta to a peseta and a half. The peseta ought to be equivalent to the franc but is much depreciated. So let us say that a bird can be had for a shilling. My wife adds that she would be very happy to import birds for your daughter--and this is not a civil phrase but gospel truth: she is never happier than when she is acquiring pets as principal or agent:--so it is, and I can't help it. I like the song of these dusky birds: it is not nearly so piercing as that of the Norwich variety. I daresay that I have told you some untruths in this ornithological excursus--but at any rate I make no mistake about the price of wild birds or about my wife's willingness--I might say eagerness--to transact business. FOOTNOTES: [25] Middle Ages. In 1900 Maitland published a translation of part of Otto Gierke's (O.G.) _Das deutsche Genossenschaftrecht_ under the title _Political Theories of the Middle Ages_. [26] The B. G. B. is the _Bürgerliche Gesetzbuch_. Maitland was reading Mugdan's _Die Gesammten Materialien zum Bürgerlichen Gesetzbuch_. The Y. B. B. are the Year-books. [27] _The Cambridge Modern History._ [28] Otto Gierke's monograph on Johannes Althusius, published 1880. [29] To the _Cambridge Modern History_. [30] Maitland was invited to succeed Lord Acton in the Chair of Modern History at Cambridge. [31] Mire Vᵈ! No verá cada día el condicional de subjunctivo. [32] The Duke of Devonshire, Chancellor of the University of Cambridge, had criticised Mr Joseph Chamberlain's fiscal proposals. XI.