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s n -. • -> 





PREFACE. 



Brantwood, g^/i/uf!e, 1881. 



Quarter past five, morning. 



The birds chirping feebly, — mostly chaf- 

 finches answering each other, the rest dis- 

 composed, I fancy, by the June snow ; * the 

 lake neither smooth nor rippled, but like a 

 surface of perfectly bright glass, ill cast ; 

 the lines of wave few and irregular, like flaws 

 in the planes of a fine crystal. 



I see this book was begun eight years ago ; 

 — then intended to contain only four Oxford 

 lectures : but the said lectures also ' intended ' 

 to contain the cream of forty volumes of 

 scientific ornithology. Which intentions, all 

 and sundry, having gone, Carlyle would have 

 said, to water, and more piously-minded 

 persons, to fire, I am obliged now to cast my 



* The summits of the Old Man, of Wctherlam, and 

 Helvellyn, were all white, on the morning when this was 

 written. 



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