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INTRODUCTORY CHAPTERS. 
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a) 
CHAPTER I. 
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Tux object with which this book is written is that it may be 
interesting and useful to young egg-collectors. It is not easy to 
make a book, which is to be devoted to such details as the length 
and breadth and shades and markings of some two or three 
hundred different eggs, either interesting, or even barely read- 
able. But there is no necessity that a book of British birds’ 
eges and nests should be devoted to merely such details as 
those. For my own part, I do not find it easy altogetner to 
dissociate the eggs laid from the bird which lays them; and 
when I see a beautiful nest, I can hardly help being led to 
think something about the builder, its means, objects, powers, 
instincts and intelligence. And I don’t see why a book about 
eggs and nests should not follow the direction given by those 
same objects to my thoughts, and the thoughts of hundreds 
and thousands of other men besides me, and I am sure too of 
hundreds and thousands of boys and girls as well. Iam as sure — 
as if I could see into the minds of many and many a young 
nest-hunter, that when he finds one day the wonderfully neat and 
beautiful Chaffinch’s or Goldfinch’s or Crested Wren’s nest, 
and the next, lights upon some littering Jackdaw’s nest, or 
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