VI PREFACE. 



One word about the title and the arrangement of the 

 chapters. We Oxford tutors always reckon our year as 

 beginning with the October term, and ending with the close 

 of the Long Vacation. My chapters are arranged on this 

 reckoning; to an Oxford residence from October to June, 

 broken only by short vacations, succeeds a brief holiday in the 

 Alps ; then comes a sojourn in the midlands ; and of the 

 leisurely studies which the latter part of the Long Vacation 

 allows, I have given an ornithological specimen in the last 

 chapter. 



Some parts of the first, second, and fifth chapters, have 

 appeared in the Oxford Magazine, and I have to thank the 

 Editors for leave to reprint them. The third chapter, or 

 rather the substance of it, was given as a lecture to the 

 energetic Natural History Society of Marlborough CoUege, 

 and has already been printed in their reports; the sixth 

 chapter has been developed out of a paper lately read before 

 the Oxford Philological Society. For the frontispiece, which 

 represents one of the favourite nooks of the Oxford birds, I am 

 indebted to the kindness and skill of a brother-Fellow. 



The reader will notice that I have said very little about un- 

 common birds, and have tried to keep to the habits, songs, and 

 haunts of the commoner kinds, which their very abundance endears 

 to their human friends. I have made no collection, and it will 

 therefore be obvious to ornithologists that I have no scientific 

 knowledge of structure and classification beyond that which I 



