18 BIRDS IN LONDON 



happiness than all the gold pheasants and 

 other brightly-apparelled prisoners, native and 

 foreign, to be seen in the park cages. 



From the foregoing it will be seen that this 

 little book, which comes in place of the one I 

 had, in a vague way, once thought of writing, 

 is in some degree a book with a purpose. 

 Birds are not considered merely as objects of 

 .interest to the ornithologist and to a few other 

 persons objects or creatures which the great 

 mass of the people of the metropolis have really 

 nothing to do with, and vaguely regard as some- 

 thing at a distance, of no practical import, or as 

 wholly unrelated to their urban life. Bather 

 they are considered as a necessary part of those 

 pleasure- and health-giving transcripts of nature 

 which we retain and cherish as our best pos- 

 sessions the open sun-lit and tree-shaded spaces, 

 green with grass and bright with water; so im- 

 portant a part indeed, as bringing home to us 

 that glad freedom and wildness which is our 

 best medicine, that without it all the rest would 

 lose much of its virtue. 



But on this point the extreme pleasure 



