io PREFACE. 



have set down as plainly as I could what I have 

 myself observed and experienced. 



It is my privilege to be unusually well placed 

 for the minute study of living creatures, and in 

 that study I find a pleasure so intense that I 

 long to attract others to the same well-spring 

 of pleasure. Unpretending as are the chronicles 

 of the inmates of my house and garden, they 

 are scrupulously true, and every fact that a 

 veracious observer records is a contribution, how- 

 ever small, to our general sum of knowledge. 



It only remains to say that a few of these 

 chapters have appeared in Nature Notes and in 

 The Girl's Oivn Paper. The rest are now printed 



for the first time. 



ELIZA BRIGHTWEN. 



