196 A COUNTRY READER. 



BIRDS. 



Leave for the moment out of your considera- 

 tion the great good that the birds do in keeping 

 down insects, and thus saving the crops from 

 partial destruction. Leave that out, and think 

 only of what a difference birds make to the 

 brightness and interest of the country. Their 

 beautiful song, their marvellous flight, their 

 matchless colour how it charms and soothes, if 

 you have eyes that can see and hearts that can 

 love the beautiful. 



The writer has been in foreign countries the 

 skies were blue, the flowers here and there 

 beautiful ; but there was a something wanting, 

 something missing a void. And that something 

 was the song and movement of birds. 



If a foreigner or a visitor from one of our 

 colonies comes to this country, it is not the 

 endless movement and rhythmical order of huge 

 London, nor the smoke and intellectual bustle of 

 the manufacturing centres that strikes him with 

 wonder. It is not this that he takes away in 

 his heart to remember, but the green grass, 

 flowering lanes, and singing birds of England's 

 country. 



London and the manufacturing centres he can 



