viii BIRD NOTES 



following : ' It is all very well to talk of " pleasant 

 fresh notes," but it is only because I am setting 

 them down for you, who I know will care to read 

 them, that they are pleasant and fresh ; and if I 

 went to set them down book- wise, they would be 

 anything but that. I should see before me we 

 will say a great-grand-niece with an antiquarian 

 turn, fingering superciliously an old yellow manu- 

 script, very badly written, and remarking, " This 

 was written by an ancient relative of mine ; an 

 old maid who seems to have had nothing to do 

 but to feed birds." Seriously, there is no reason 

 to suppose that anyone would be interested. The 

 matter of anything I have to say dealing, as it 

 must deal, with individual birds, and not with 

 birds in general is so thin that it needs support.' 

 The first part, however, of these ' Bird Notes ' 

 is the result of her taking a rather more favourable 

 view of the possibility of putting them into per- 

 manent form ; a result aided by getting a note- 

 book wherein to enter them. In a letter written 

 about the time of this acquisition, after telling me 

 that her nuthatches (who were always rather a 

 source of difficulty in her bird community) were 

 getting tamer and more civilised, and that she 



