PREFACE. 



THERE is a frontier line to civilization in this country yet, 

 and not far outside its great centres we come quickly even 

 now on the borderland of nature. Modern progress, except 

 where it has exterminated them, has scarcely touched the 

 habits of bird or animal ; so almost up to the very houses 

 of the metropolis the nightingale yearly returns to her 

 former haunts. If we go a few hours' journey only, and 

 then step just beyond the highway where the steam 

 ploughing engine has left the mark of its wide wheels on 

 the dust and glance into the hedgerow, the copse, or 

 stream, there are nature's children as unrestrained in their 

 wild, free life as they were in the veritable backwoods of 

 primitive England. So, too, in some degree with the tillers 

 of the soil : old manners and customs linger, and there 

 seems an echo of the past in the breadth of their pro- 

 nunciation. 



But a difficulty confronts the explorer who would carry 

 away a note of what he has seen, because nature is not cut 

 and dried to hand, nor easily classified, each subject shad- 

 ing gradually into another. In studying the ways, for in- 

 stance, of so common a bird as the starling, it cannot be 

 separated from the farmhouse in the thatch of which it 

 often breeds, the rooks with whom it associates, or the 



