PBEFACE 



There is a frontier line to civilisation in this country yet, 

 and not far outside its great centres we come quickly 

 even now on the borderland of nature. Modern progress, 

 except where it has exterminated them, has scarcely 

 touched the habits of bird or animal; so almost up to the 

 very houses of the metropolis the nightingale yearly 

 returns to her former haunts. If we go a few hours' 

 journey only, and then step just beyond the highway — 

 where the steam ploughing engine has left the mark of 

 its wide wheels on the dust — and glance into the hedge- 

 row, the copse, or stream, there are nature's children as 

 unrestrained in their wild, free life as they were in the 

 veritable backwoods of primitive England. So, too, in 

 some degree with the tillers of the soil : old manners and 

 customs linger, and there seems an echo of the past in the 

 breadth of their pronunciation. 



But a difficulty confronts the explorer who would 

 carry away a note of what he has seen, because nature 

 is not cut and dried to hand, nor easily classified, each 

 subject shading gradually into another. In studying the 



