246 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS 



year and sigh to recall the time when I was a young 

 barbarian myself and had no such books to instruct 

 and delight me. 



But I have another and better reason than the 

 fact of the existence of all these activities for my 

 belief that a change is taking place in the country 

 boy's mind, that his interest and pleasure in the wild 

 bird is growing, and that as it grows he becomes less 

 destructive. A good deal of my time is passed in the 

 villages in different parts of the country; I make the 

 acquaintance of the children and get into the con- 

 fidence of many small boys and find out what they 

 do and think and feel about the birds, and it is my 

 experience that in recent years something new has 

 come into their minds — a sweeter, humaner feeling 

 about their feathered fellow-creatures. I also take 

 into account the spirit which is revealed in the 

 village school children's essays written for the Bird 

 and Tree competitions established by the Royal 

 Society for the Protection of Birds. During the last 

 four or five years I have had to read many hundreds 

 of these essays, each dealing with one species from the 

 child's own personal observation, and it has proved 

 a very pleasing task to me because so many of the 

 young essayists had put their whole heart in theirs. 

 Their enthusiasm shines even in the weakest of these 

 compositions, considered merely as essays, and we 

 may imagine that the country boy or girl of ten or 

 twelve or thirteen finds the task assigned him not a 

 very simple one, to be placed at a table with sheets 

 of foolscap paper before him and given an hour in 



