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ever originated by man? Can he walk in the fields without seeing and 
hearing around him sights and sounds which, while tending to make 
him more and more thoughtful, deeply impress him with a sense of 
the wisdom, the power, ait the beneficence of his Creator? That 
man who has passed his allotted time in ignorance of the teeming 
worlds of life around him, has had denied to him pleasures and delights 
the experience of which must have gone far to elevate the noblest 
of God’s created beings. ‘ The study of ornithology has always been 
a favourite one with “me,” says the late Mr. Wheelwright, “ and is 
one of the few innocent pleasures of youth which follows a man 
into maturer years, and upon which he can look back in the decline of 
life with feelings of pure and unalloyed delight. Man’s constant 
companions in every outdoor occupation, cheering him with their 
presence and their songs, and often affording him a principal means of 
subsistence, it is little wonder that the study of the habits and in- 
stincts of birds should be a favourite one with most persons; and to 
him whose time is quietly and happily spent in the forests and 
the fields it adds one of the truest zests to rural life.” 
Notwithstanding the limitation of area implied in a work entitled 
‘The Birds of Great Britain,’ the most elementary student of 
natural history must acknowledge that in numbers and in interest, if 
not in beauty of marking, our avifauna will bear a favourable com- 
parison with that of other countries of similar extent. The one most 
closely approximating to it would appear to be that of Japan—a fact 
sufficiently surprising when we remember the vast continent em- 
bracing many degrees of longitude stretching between the two. But 
the resemblance may possibly be explained by the similarity existing in 
their physical conditions and in the general character of their natural 
productions. Both countries are blessed with a temperate climate 
especially suited to similar forms of bird-life, some species identically 
the same occurring in each; but, in addition, Great Britain offers in 
its numerous islets, its rocky promontories and extensive marshes, its 
natural forests and heathy expanses, certain advantages of locality 
not perhaps enjoyed by Japan to the same extent, and which are 
singularly well adapted to forms of the most opposite kinds. 
One feature of especial interest must always strike the naturalist in 
studying the birds of the temperate zone, viz. the alternation of its 
feathered immigrants, which lends such a charm to the scenery, a 
charm which is greatly enhanced when we reflect that these migratory 
movements are governed by certain infallible laws. Thus the arrival 
and departure of the Swallow, the Cuckoo, the Landrail, &c. is as 
strictly regulated as the recurrence of the seasons : 
“Yea, the Stork in the heavens knoweth her appointed times; and the Turtle 
and the Crane and the Swallow observe the time of their coming.” 
Besides being tenanted by about one hundred and fifty stationary 
species, Great Britain has migrants and occasional visitants from the 
four points of the compass; thus, in spring, nearly fifty species visit 
us from the south—whilst in the autumn our milder and more equable 
climate attracts a still larger number from the north, who instinctively 
know they will here find that food and shelter which the rigorous 
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