PREFACE 



This book goes out with no other pretensions beyond 

 an aim at accuracy and truth. 



The ways of some wild creatures, followed now 

 through many years, are here dropped back into their 

 proper places, so to say, as readably as I can contrive 

 to do it. I have tried not barely to catalogue facts 

 as facts, but to mirror something of the many-sided 

 life of Nature where it beats through the seasons in 

 this and other lands. I have tried, too, to keep 

 touch with an influence there is out of doors, 

 comparable with that of the beautiful in Art, but 

 deeper-reaching, wider, finer — a star for a crimson 

 lamp. 



If in this I had perfectly succeeded, he who 

 read would be for that time " in league with the 

 stones of the field," the wind moving in the grasses, 

 the sun playing on his face. And as this cannot be, 

 I am content to hope that here may be found a 



