PREFAOE 
ond 
HIS volume has not, even in the 
slightest degree, been suggested 
by a desire to make a pretentious 
book. It owes its existence to 
A an enthusiastic love of the sub- 
4¢ ject to which it relates. It has, there- 
; — fore, been written lovingly, and it will be 
put forward confidently; with a confidence, 
however, born of a belief, not in any especial 
claim of the work on the attention of the 
public, but in the existence amongst English 
people, of an intense—nay, of an enthusiastic— 
love of Nature. This feeling of love for Nature 
