ii8 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS 



Nevertheless there are compensations. The very re- 

 straints which annoy us may not be without their ad- 

 vantages. The rare experience of finding myself at 

 last in the presence of some long-wished-for bird, com- 

 paring it with its imaginary mental portrait and with 

 the mental images of its nearest relations, and finally 

 of being able to add this one new portrait to the gallery 

 existing in the mind — my best possession and chief 

 delight — perhaps affords me a keener pleasure than can 

 be experienced by the man of unlimited opportimities. 

 My humbler triumph is like that of the lover of 

 literature of small means, who from time to time, by 

 some lucky chance, becomes the possessor of some long- 

 desired book. For how much greater is his joy in 

 fingering and in reading it than the wealthy owner of a 

 great library can know? It is true the poor book-lover 

 dreams of better things: more leisure to hunt, more 

 money to buy — a legacy perhaps from some kindly being 

 he knows not of, which will enable him to grasp greater 

 prizes than have ever come in his way. So with me: 

 year by year I dream of longer journeys into remoter 

 and wilder places in search of other charming species 

 not yet seen in their native haunts. And that was my 

 dream last winter — it always is my dream — which, when 

 summer came round, found its usual ending. The 

 longer journey had to be postponed to another year and 

 a shorter one taken; so it came about that I got no 

 further than the Peak district, just to spend a few 

 weeks during the breeding season with half a dozen 

 birds, all familiar enough to most ornithologists, but 



