viii LONDON BIRDS 



upon, to jump the ring-fence which hedges the owner in with 

 his own immediate personal concerns. 



This little book has no pretence to be anything more than 

 a collection of notes made, at different times and in varying 

 surroundings, from the back of a favourite Hobby one that 

 has this special recommendation, that, when once mounted, 

 it is to the most beautiful spots that it oftenest carries 

 the rider : to ' thick grove and tangled stream ' ; to moor, 

 meadow, forest, and marsh ; to sea-cliffs haunted by myriads 

 of sea-fowl ; to island-studded lakes and lonely mountains. 



If by any lucky chance anything in it should be the means 

 of awakening in a young reader a first interest in bird or 

 insect, it will not be until his hair is silvering that he will 

 realise the extent of his debt to the writer. 



It is suggestive that Pitt, when Premier of a Government 

 in a minority in the House of Commons, and as his private 

 correspondence shows worried about his mother's money- 

 matters, bought Holwood ' because he had bird-nested there 

 as a boy.' 



The chapters on London Birds have, since the publication 

 of the second edition, been revised and considerably enlarged 

 by the addition of letters addressed at intervals to The Times, 

 and two new chapters are added. In one of these, on the 

 ' Haunts of the Shearwater,' the greater part of which was 

 published as an article in JBlacJcwood's Magazine, entitled 'A 

 Poor Eelation of the Albatross,' now reprinted with the per- 

 mission of the proprietors, another letter to The Times has 

 been embodied, describing the two Skelligs. 



The chapters on the Fames and Shetland Isles, the 

 Norfolk Broads, a Dutch nesting-place of the Avocet, and 

 the concluding chapter on Bird Life, are reprinted, also by 

 permission, very kindly given, from the Contemporary Review. 



