190 
BIEDS IN A VILLAGE. 
when every person with even a slight taste for 
reading regularly peruses not fewer than two or 
three or four volumes per week, if we were to have 
a hundred best books inculcating — no, that is a 
bad word ; let us inculcate nothing — expressive, 
let us say, of the love of animals, and descriptive 
of the pleasure to be got by observing them. 
If such a list were to be made, it is probable that 
not very many books treating of animals exclusively 
would figure in it. Works having a wider scope, 
but treating largely of animal life, would probably 
be favourites : such a work as Walden, for instance 
which I should be inclined to regard as the one 
golden book in any century of best books. 
Of recent works that deal directly with the 
subject, I may mention as worthy of a place, Warde 
Fowler's Tales of the Birds, and Mrs. Bright wen's 
Wild Nature won by Kindness. Two small books 
not to be omitted, for they are not merely good but 
most excellent, are Friends in Fur and Feathers 
and The Otters Story. These two, by the same 
author, but issued by different publishing houses, 
are, strange to say, out of print, and I wish, and all 
who have read them will most probably wish with 
me, that they could be reprinted in one volume 
with the former title, which is older than the other, 
and best known and most attractive. It would, 
moreover, be descriptive of the contents of both 
