INTRODUCTORY CHAPTERS. 3 



A few words on another subject. The author has been gravely 

 taken to task by some of his conscientious friends, for delineat- 

 ing in one or two of his former books the pleasures and excite- 

 ments of egg-hunting, or the satisfaction of trying to form a 

 methodical collection. He has been more than once asked Do 

 you really mean to encourage boys in robbing birds' nests ? Can 

 you defend such a practice Irom the charge of cruelty ? 



If I thought there was any real or necessary connection 

 between a love of e^g-hunting yes, and egg-collecting, too, 

 and cruelty, I would not say another word for it or about it. 

 But I am sure that the real lover of birds and their nests and 

 eggs is not the bov who is chargeable with those torn and ruined 

 nests " destroyed " as they may well be styled which grieve one 

 as he walks along the lanes and hedge sides. If the nest is taken, 

 or rudely and roughly handled, or the eggs all plundered, there is 

 cruelty : for in the one case, the poor parent-birds are warned by 

 their instinct, if not their intelligence, to forsake their treasured 

 charge ; in the other, they suffer from pitiless robbery of what 

 they most love. But if the parent bird be not rudely and 

 repeatedly driven from her nest, if the nest be not pulled out 

 of shape, or the containing bushes or environing shelter be not 

 wilfully or carelessly disturbed if two or three eggs are still 

 left for her to incubate, there is, so far as human observation 

 can reach, no pain, or concern, or uneasiness, to the little owners 

 from the abstraction of one egg or more, and, therefore, of course, 

 no cruelty in the abstraction. The legitimate pursuit of sport in 

 the stubbles and turnip fields, or on the open moor, does not 

 differ more widely from the cruel proceedings of the cold-blooded, 

 hard-hearted slaughterer of his dozens of Rock-birds (many of which 

 are always left to die lingeringly and miserably), than the object 

 or manner of action of the true lover of birds and their ways 

 and nests and eggs, from the ruthless destruction of every nest 

 and its contents which may happen to be met with by some young 

 loutish country savage. 



Again, a few words more, and this time about classification. 

 I should like, if such a course were profitable, or even practi- 

 cable, to make just such a classification as an active, sharp-eyed, 

 observant, persevering nest-hunter would, as it were, find ready- 

 made for him, by the results of his rambles and investigations 

 and discoveries ; that is to say, to group the birds and their eggs 

 according to their frequent occurrence, their comparative, but 

 still not positive, infrequency, or their downright rarity. By 

 this means, and the subdivisions which would be suggested by 

 an enumeration of the most usual sites of the several nests, an 

 interesting, and at least partially instructive as well as good, 

 ystem of classification would be devised. Bui I am afraid such 



B 9 



