BIRD-NESTING IN FIELDS AND COMMONS. 
Away from the busy haunts of town-life, every hedgerow, 
field, and common, is alive with the song of birds ; the familiar 
sparrow chirps on the housetops ; a thousand songsters pur- 
sue their busy avocations in the garden, the orchards, and the 
hedgerows ; some searching, like robbers as they are, for the 
seeds just sown in the ground, but the majority of them 
aiding the cottager to subdue- the larvae of insects, which 
would presently, without this help, overwhelm him with their 
ravages. It is a bright April morning. All the birds which 
breed with us are either building their nests, or, that office 
past, they are engaged in laying or sitting on the eggs, which 
it is our object to collect. It is to be feared that this our inten- 
tion is not to be defended on any fair principle of meurn and 
tuum ; on what ground, then, can it be defended ? On scientific 
grounds surely, for it is one of the records of creation, which it 
is the object of science to preserve. In our case, let us call 
it the indulgence of a rational curiosity, which may serve the 
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