Preface xi 



trayed on the full page illustrations^ the smaller line 

 drawings being introduced more or less promiscuously, as 

 any bird I have kept seemed to occur to me as one that 

 would go towards representing the all sorts and conditions 

 amongst my pets. 



To Mr. Dent I hope I may express my thanks for 

 the pains he has taken in causing my humble attempts 

 at bird-drawing to be reproduced in such a manner, as 

 to almost succeed in making silk purses out of sows' ears. 



I could not resist introducing as a frontispiece my 

 beautiful old home in Buckinghamshire, of which my 

 mother was heiress [now belonging to my brother, Mr. 

 Frankland-Russell-Astley], a house restored in the reign 

 of Slueen Elizabeth — who there for a time incarcerated 

 Lady Mary, the sister of Lady Jane Grey — and where' 

 once Lady Russell, one of the daughters of Oliver 

 Cromwell, presided as mistress. On its chimneys many 

 a stork has, of late years, rested ; and in its grounds 

 many another of my birds has walked and flown. 



HUBERT DELAVAL ASTLET. 



Benham Park, Newbury, 

 October, igoo. 



