226 
NATURE NOTES. 
down and go off to sleep. He learned his name, and would 
come when we called him and perch on our fingers ; and he 
seemed to love us as much as we had learned to love him. We 
hoped he would have stayed with us all the winter, but I am 
sorry to say we were doomed to disappointment. The house in 
which we then lived had two flights of stairs, one over the 
other. One morning he was playing on the top landing when 
he fluttered between the banisters and could not recover him- 
self, and so tumbled into the hall below, where we found him 
partly stunned. After a time he revived a little, but we think 
he must have hurt himself internally, for I am sorry to say he 
got gradually worse and worse. My sister, to whom he specially 
belonged, used to take him up to her room when she went to 
bed. A few mornings after the sad accident she found him 
dead on her pillow. I need not tell you how sorry we were to 
lose our dear little bird, and although this happened several 
years ago we have never forgotten our bright loving little Dick, 
and we never shall do so. Mildred Holt. 
BOOKS FOR YOUNG SELBORNI ANS. 
Too much importance cannot be attached to the imbuing of our young people 
with the true Selbornian spirit — a love and a reverence for all created things ; and 
one of the best ways of encouraging the growth of that spirit is by interesting 
boys and girls in the various objects they meet with in their country walks and 
seaside rambles. Thanks to the development of the work undertaken by that 
excellent organisation, the Children’s Country Holiday 7 Fund, and to the increas- 
ing cheapness of locomotion, the number of opportunities for seeing Nature of 
which town children can avail themselves is yearly increasing, and it is thus ever 
more and more desirable that they should be intelligently interested in what 
they see. 
There are, of course, plenty of books which to some extent supply what is 
needed — none of them better than the Rev. J. G. Wood’s Common Objects of the 
Country, which was a pioneer of this class of literature. There is the half-crown 
series of Natural History Rambles, published by the Society for Promoting Chris- 
tian Knowledge, of which we have lately received three examples — Underground, 
by Dr. J. E. Taylor, The Seashore, by Prof. Martin Duncan, and Lane and 
Field, by the Rev. J. G. Wood. The first is mainly though not wholly occu- 
pied with “our geological records,” the second with the animals and plants 
of the seashore, and the last wdth those of inland districts ; all are illustrated 
with figures which, as Calverley said of certain rhymes, “have done much duty,” 
or “ better to put it, of ancientry.” For the boy or girl who is already interested, 
books of which these are types are very useful ; but they will not inspire a liking 
for natural objects where this does not already' exist. For this purpose Mr. 
Wood’s is the best of the three. 
But the best book of this kind which we have as yet seen comes to us from 
Messrs. S. W. Partridge. At the same price as the volumes just mentioned, we 
have this brightly bound, beautifully illustrated, and in every w T ay attractive book, 
entitled By Sea-shore, Wood and Moorland. The author, Mr. Edw'ard Step, tells 
us in his preface that the book in its present form is an amalgamation, with addi- 
tions, of two small volumes, the first issued in 1886 having had a circulation of over 
21,000 copies, and the second, which appeared in 1S88, of which over 10,000 
copies have been sold. Both are now out of print, and it is safe to predict for the 
book now before us a circulation at least as great as either, or both of the earlier 
works. 
