BIRDS AT THEIR BEST 33 



That, briefly, is the indoor view of the subject 

 the view of those who, to begin with, were perhaps 

 town-born and town-bred ; who have existed amid 

 conditions, occupied with work and pleasures, the 

 reflex effect of which, taken altogether and in the 

 long-run, is to dim and even deaden some of the 

 brain's many faculties, and chiefly this best faculty 

 of preserving impressions of nature for long years 

 or to the end of life in all their original freshness. 



Some five or six years ago I heard a speech about 

 birds delivered by Sir Edward Grey, in which he 

 said that the love and appreciation and study of 

 birds was something fresher and brighter than the 

 second-hand interests and conventional amusements 

 in which so many in this day try to live ; that the 

 pleasure of seeing and listening to them was purer 

 and more lasting than any pleasures of excitement, 

 and, in the long-run, " happier than personal suc- 

 cess." That was a saying to stick in the mind, and 

 it is probable that some who listened failed to under- 

 stand. Let us imagine that in addition to this 

 miraculous faculty of the brain of storing innumer- 

 able brilliant images of things seen and heard, to 

 be reproduced at call to the inner sense, there existed 

 in a few gifted persons a correlated faculty by means 

 of which these treasured images could be thrown at 



