1 8 British Birds, 



whatever according to this view ! No, no. Nature 

 should not be read so. God made the Beasts of the 

 Field, and the Birds of the Air, and the Fishes of the 

 Sea, and the Insects, and the Shells, and the Trees, 

 and Herbs, and Flowers, all, as a rule, wonderfully, 

 gloriously, harmoniously beautiful, because He is a 

 God of order, and beauty, and harmony ; because it 

 would have been inconsistent with His own Beinsf 

 with the necessary purposes of such a Being, with the 

 declared objects of such a Being in Creation, not to 

 have made all " very good ; " and the same reason 

 which accounts for the beauty of the myriad flowers 

 " born to blush unseen," for that of the innumerable 

 shells and insects of past days and the present day, 

 for that of the glorious birds of Tropic lands, is all 

 that we want in the way of explanation of the 

 symmetry and beauty of the bird's ^gg. God made 

 it as well as all other things " very good." 



Something more to the point for the practical egg- 

 hunter, and even although he may be not very 

 juvenile, is to recommend the practice of jotting down 

 notes of any peculiarity of either nest or eggs or be- 

 haviour of parent birds, in any supposable case that 

 may be a little unusual. Such notes are always in- 

 teresting and very often useful at some long subse- 

 quent period ; useful in themselves, and useful too as 

 commenting on or else illustrated by, the similar 

 memoranda of other observers. Besides, in what is 

 put down upon paper w^hile the incident is still fresh, 

 and the memory of it not interfered with by other and 

 new^er matters of strong interest, the record is sure 

 to be accurate ; while mere recollection at a later 



