2° BRITISH BIRDS, THEIR EGGS AND NESTS. 
inartistic, careless-seeming Jay’s or Ring-dove’s, that the wide, 
wonderful contrast and difference sets him thinking—What is 
the reason of this strange dissimilarity? Is one of these birds 
really less clever than the other? Did God make one of them 
a careless, disorderly, unthrifty bird, while the other He made 
such a wonderfully neat and dexterous and contriving one ? 
And I am equally sure that a little measure of observation 
and thought will be enough to show the young inquirer not 
only that the Great Maker of Birds and Giver of their instincts 
and understandings and capacities has not left some of His 
creatures imperfect in some of their qualifications and endow- 
ments, but that the very contrasts and unlikenesses which first 
set him on questioning at all, all teach one great lesson and 
illustrate one great truth,—namely this, “O Lord, how manifold 
are Thy works! In wisdom hast Thou made them all.” 
Perhaps an Egg-book might be so written as to help such 
thought and observation as is here supposed, and now and then 
besides to suggest explanations or lead to investigation or 
communicate a knowledge of facts such as to illustrate and 
make clear, and even entertainig or amusing, the every day 
incidents and facts which fall commonly enough beneath the 
notice of the moderately sharp-eyed and observant nest-hunter. 
The difficulty of making such a book useful to the systematic 
collector of eggs, however young, is not nearly as great as that 
of making it interesting to the many, who, though not inspired 
with the ambition of owning a real grand cabinet, and of 
arranging its manifold drawers with neatly ordered and ticketed 
ege-cards, are yet sensible of a real pleasure and enjoyment in 
noticing the nests and eggs of their numerous “feathered 
friends,” and identifying such as may chance to be less familiarly 
known than the majority of those met with under ordinary 
