During That
Period Of Initiation Into The Gentle Art, The Billiard-Room At "The
Weaste," Manchester, Was Converted Every Morning,
For purposes of study,
into a dissecting-room, a chamber of horrors, a shambles, where headless
trunks and brains and
Gouged-out eyes of lapwings and other "easy" birds
(I had not yet reached the arduous owl-or-titmouse stage of the
profession) lay about in sanguinary morsels, while the floor was
ankle-deep in feathers, and tables strewn with tweezers, lancets,
arsenical paste, corrosive sublimate and other paraphernalia of the
trade. The butler had to be furiously tipped.
There were large grounds belonging to this estate, fields and woodlands
once green, then blackened with soot, and now cut up into allotments and
built over. Here, ever since men could remember - certainly since the
place had come into the possession of the never-to-be-forgotten Mr.
Edward T. - a kingfisher had dwelt by a little streamlet of artificial
origin which supported a few withered minnows and sticklebacks and dace.
This kingfisher was one of the sights of the domain. Visitors were taken
to see it. The bird, though sometimes coy, was generally on view.
Nevertheless it was an extremely prudent old kingfisher; to my infinite
annoyance, I never succeeded in destroying it. Nor did I even find its
nest, an additional source of grief. Lancashire naturalists may be
interested to know that this bird was still on the spot in the 'eighties
(I have the exact date somewhere [25]) - surely a noteworthy state of
affairs, so near the heart of a smoky town like Manchester.
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