THE IMMORTAL NIGHTINGALE 249 



and though so cheap they are exceedingly good of their 

 kind — well written, well printed, well and often very 

 beautifully illustrated. I turn over a heap of these 

 publications every year and sigh to recall the time 

 when I was a young barbarian myself and had no 

 such books to instruct and delight me. 



But I have another and better reason than the fact 



of the existence of all these activities for my belief that 



a change is taking place in the country boy's mind, that 



his interest and pleasure in the wild bird is growing, 



and that as it grows he becomes less destructive. A 



good deal of my time is passed in the villages in different 



parts of the country ; I make the acquaintance of the 



children and get into the confidence of many small 



boys and find out what they do and think and feel about 



the birds, and it is my experience that in recent years 



something new has come into their minds — a sweeter, 



humaner feeling about their feathered fellow-creatures. 



I also take into account the spirit which is revealed in 



the village school children's essays written for the Bird 



and Tree competitions established by the Royal 



Society for the Protection of Birds. During the last 



four or five years I have had to read many hundreds 



of these essays, each dealing with one species from the 



child's own personal observation and it has proved 



a very pleasing task to me because so many of 



the young essayists had put their whole heart in 



theirs. Their enthusiasm shines, even in the weakest 



of these compositions, considered merely as essays, 



and we may imagine that the country boy or girl 



