WILD LIFE AT HOME, AND ABROAD. 



A COMPARISON, AND A CHOICE. 



I love my Country, and I must admit I prefer to remain 

 purely a home bird. When I have traversed every nook and 

 corner in England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales in search of 

 the Wild Life with which our own and the sister Island teems, 

 then perhaps I may look forward to quitting our own shores 

 for fields anew. But in this brief life of three score years and 

 ten I am afraid if I carefully and accurately naturalize in Great 

 Britain alone I shall at the end of my tether have not even 

 finished my own Country, to say nothing of visiting elsewhere. 



Dear Britain, how I glory in being born and bred in such a 

 free and delightful land, where there is such abundance of Wild 

 Life to interest, elevate, and amuse. As a homester, I do not 

 wonder at the foreigner being captivated with the rural charms 

 of Britain, her woods and vales, her moors and fens, her heaths 

 and dells, her meadows and quiet shady nooks, her Killarneys 

 and Windermeres, her soft crystal streams, her noble parks, 

 her mountains, and the peaceful scene which is presented as 

 one travels in the country from North to South, and from East 

 to West. And the Wild Life which exists is not only astonish- 

 ing to our foreign visitor, but also to those of us who make it 

 a life study. The more we look into the Nature around us 

 from January right away to December deeper do we have to 

 study, closer must we observe, wider the field opens, until finally 

 we find our task incomplete, our life's journey too short to 

 finish what we had commenced, and .we quit this mortal coil 

 for the unknown worlds, leaving our study almost at starting 

 point. Volumes have been written about the Wild Life of Britain, 

 its birds have had more books published about them than any 

 others in the whole world, but volumes still remain, and will in 

 the future doubtless be forthcoming. 



