PREFACE 



ON the tenth day of April, eighteen hundred and 

 ninety-two, my brother photographed the nest 

 and eggs of a Song Thrush in the neighbourhood 

 of London, and the result appeared to me to be so 

 full of promise that I at once determined to write 

 a book on British Birds' Nests and get him to 

 illustrate it from beginning to end by photographs 

 taken in situ. Before mentioning the idea to my 

 publishers, however, I submitted an article on the 

 subject, together with a number of photographs of 

 nests and eggs, to the Editor of an illustrated 

 weekly periodical as a feeler. The prompt accept- 

 ance of the contribution, accompanied by a request 

 for more materials' of the same character, filled 

 author and illustrator with hope, and we laboured 

 unremittingly spring by spring, without experience 

 or suggestion of any kind on the pictorial side of 

 our work, in the preparation of the original edition 

 of this book, which first saw the light in the autumn 

 of eighteen hundred and ninety-five. 



It was the first book of its kind to be illustrated 

 throughout by means of photographs taken direct 

 from Nature and, as a great authority said at the 

 time, '" show things as they are and not as they 

 are supposed to be." 



When it appeared, Dr. Bowdler Sharpe, of the 

 British Museum, South Kensington, said that it 

 " marked a new era in natural history." I must 



894819 



