18 BIBDS IX LONDON 



happiness — than all the gold pheasants and 

 other brightly-apparelled prisoners, native and 

 foreign, to be seen in the park cages. 



From the foregoing it will be seen that this 

 little book, which comes in place of the one I 

 had, in a vague way, once thought of writing, 

 is in some degree a book with a purpose. 

 Birds are not considered merely as objects of 

 interest to the ornithologist and to a few other 

 persons — objects or creatures which the great 

 mass of the people of the metropolis have really 

 nothing to do with, and vaguely regard as some- 

 thing at a distance, of no practical import, or as 

 wholly unrelated to their urban life. Eather 

 they are considered as a necessary part of those 

 pleasure- and health-giving transcripts of nature 

 which we retain and cherish as our best pos- 

 sessions — the open sun-lit and tree-shaded spaces, 

 ureen with <^n-ass and bri<2:ht with water: so im- 

 j)ortant a part indeed, as bringing lionu^ to us 

 that glad fi'eedom and wildness which is our 

 best medicine, that without it all the rest would 

 lose much of its virtue. 



P)iit oi» lliis point — the extreme pleasure 



