THE IMMORTAL NIGHTINGALE 249 



and though so cheap they are exceedingly good of their 

 kind — well written, well printed, well and often very 

 beautifully illustrated. I turn over a heap of these 

 publications every 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 confidence 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 



