A YEAR WITH THE BIRDS. 
285 
A YEAR WITH THE BIRDS.* 
A very charming book bearing this title lias recently been 
written by an Oxford Don, who is also a true lover of birds. It 
belongs to a class of books of which we have far too few— 
books in which interesting observations on natural history 
are preserved in a form to attract general attention. Our 
best book of the kind is White’s “ Selborne,” and we do not 
think we are awarding too much praise to “ A Year with the 
Birds” when we say it is a book of the same class. It is 
not necessary for its full enjoyment that the reader should be 
a scientific ornithologist. On the contrary, we should rather 
say it is a book written for the intelligent general reader, and 
more especially for those who, residing in the country, would 
gladly have their interest awakened in living things generally. 
It is strange that so few people care to know anything of the 
birds, insects, and flowers by which they are surrounded; 
this is probably due to defective education rather than to any 
other cause. 
Chapters I. and II. are devoted to the birds the writer 
has met with at Oxford. “ For several years past,” he says, 
“ I have contrived, even on the busiest or the rainiest Oxford 
mornings, to steal out for twenty minutes or half an hour 
soon after breakfast, and in the Broad Walk, the Botanic 
Garden, or the Parks, to let my senses exercise themselves on 
things outside me.In the peaceful study of 
birds I have found an occupation which exactly falls in with 
the habit I had formed—for it is in the early morning that 
birds are most active and least disturbed by human beings; 
an occupation, too, which can be carried on at all times of 
the day in Oxford with much greater success than I could 
possibly have imagined when I began it. Even for one who 
lias not often time or strength to take long rambles in the 
country round us, it is astonishing how much of the beauty, 
the habits, and the songs of birds may be learnt within the 
city itself, or in its immediate precincts.” The same may 
be said of many other spots in the Midland Counties, especi¬ 
ally in all such where “ the three chief requisites of 
the life of most birds” are to be found co-existent—“food, 
water, and some kind of cover.” 
As it is, perhaps, too much to expect that many adults who 
have reached or passed the meridian of life will be induced 
* “ A Year with the Birds.” By an Oxford Tutor. Oxford : B. H. 
Blackwell; London: Simpkin, Marshall, and Co. 
