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BIRDS IN A VILLAGE. 
literature in this country — the literature, I mean, 
of those who go not to books but to nature for 
their material. It is hard, well-nigh impossible, 
I think, for any one to know the shy, volatile 
inhabitants of any district sufficiently well to 
justify a book about them, when so many books 
about birds have been written, without that 
familiarity with their ways which comes only from 
very long and patient observation, which begins 
in boyhood in the country-born boy, and grows 
with his growth, and becomes at last a habit of 
the mind as well as a passion. This is the 
deliberate opinion of one who has been a lover 
and observer of birds from childhood, and should 
therefore be worth something. 
Why then this little book, since its writer 
possesses not this intimate necessary knowledge of 
his subject ? Well, if the book itself does not show, 
a dozen answers to such a question might be given 
in as many minutes, every one of them perfectly 
satisfactory. I might say, for instance, borrowing 
the pet notion of Anatole France, that in this small 
volume I have only been writing of myself d propos 
of British birds. One must have a medium to 
work in. There must be some way or " port " for 
the mind. If this one happens to be "always 
peopled with a great multitude," I must never- 
theless walk in it, having no longer that other 
