vi PREFACE 



The remaining chapter, "The Old Manor House 

 and its Surroundings," which appears now for the 

 first time, explains itself. The Old Manor House of 

 Bingham's Melcombe is to my later life, in its relation 

 to birds, something of what the "Old Thatched 

 Rectory " at the little village of West Stafford, was 

 to my earlier years ; and the chapter describing 

 it serves, among other purposes, to give to the 

 birds of which the next one treats, "a local 

 habitation, and a name." Its old grey walls and 

 its surroundings seem to enhance the charms, and 

 even, to some extent, to modify the habits of the 

 birds which haunt them ; while they, in their turn, 

 lend something of life, of activity, of enjoyment, of 

 music to the atmosphere of peace and undisturbed 

 repose which always seems to hover over its ancient 

 precincts. 



It will be observed that in a portion of two of 

 the chapters, those on the Thatched Rectory, and on 

 the Manor House, I have dropped, for the time, my 

 special subject of birds, and have endeavoured to 

 bring out something of the characteristics, the 

 manners, and the ideas of the country folk. Birds 

 have their human surroundings, and, in spite of their 

 much greater natural powers of locomotion, are often 

 as strictly local in their habits as the villagers them- 



